Eezoon
by Nabeshin Danbei Ayanami
Summary: Ranma has gone on a training trip and studies Magic. Being Ranma, of course it had to cause him even more trouble. An attempt at a R.5 and SM crossover with some OMG\AMG. Interlude Revised.
1. Meet the Senshi

(A/N: I've been changing and changing and changing this all the time when I've been bored, and I think I've finally got everything back to the way the original idea was and simplified some of the mechanics of the universe. So, re-read chapter 1. Now that I've tweaked it, I can continue the story with my original plan. Not too many obvious things have changed, but how the Time Gate works, which I'm going to make a plot device when they return. Because of that, some of the Setsuna-interactions will disappear or change for those of you that have read the return from Slayers World that is now removed. I removed it so I can begin posting the story in a linear fashion so everything makes sense. So for now, I'll actually finish the Slayers World arc that has been sitting on my computer and I've been idly working on for a while. Now that I'm back on track, I'm focusing on finishing the dang arc, but it has so much potential it keeps getting longer even though I try to keep every scene simple and just get through it. Not to mention I've slipped up a couple of times on setting up the prerequisits for the story after their return and have to rectify it by writing more. It might end up as bad as Robert Jordan who originally said the Wheel of Time series was only going to be like 5 books, and now there is 11 and a prequel. As it is, this story has over 60,000 words currently on my hard drive. It looks like by the time I finish the Slayers arc, it'll be 60,000 words by itself. This will probably be my longest story. I hope I break the 100,000 word mark, but seeing how much potential I left open in this, unless I catch random writers block, it is going to make it.)

Kami-sama, the All-mighty, God, Odin, and many other titles frowned as he looked at his 'terminal' in his office in Asgard. Although he subtly manipulated reality along with the goddesses under him to achieve certain results and ends, he left much of 'destiny' as it's put, in the hands of the inhabitants he created on Midgard. However, some young well-meaning upstarts appear to be planning for a future that will upset the balance of reality. Good and Evil are relative terms, something that most mortals don't understand. Death and pain is necessary for growth and prosperity. A simple example-- the food chain. Creatures kill other living things to eat and survive, even the plants, at the bottom of the chain, retrieve their nutrients from the earth where previous life had fallen and faded away.

Many years ago in Midgard, there was great prosperity in the solar system containing the earth, and enlightenment of the universe was high. Magic was rampant, the society having an understanding of the universe beyond the physical. But as with all things, there was an end due to greed, a nasty backwash that was inevitable. With so much good for so long, it could only be expect for so much destruction to follow to compensate to keep balance. Thus, the Moon Kingdom had fallen.

However, let it not be said that the Moon Kingdom was inept in their study, as they soon found the threads of power that Odin weaved throughout the universe to bend and mold reality into it's current form. Upon discovering what is called by the gods part of 'yggdrasil', they began to experiment on the system, trying to understand it. Unwittingly they came across one of the threads Odin created himself that could manipulate time and space.

Time is merely a measurement of the rate of movement of energies. It is possible to speed up, or slow down this process locally. It , however, is NOT POSSIBLE to travel time.

When the Queen sent her protectors to the 'future', what she really did is prevent their souls from being recycled by the system until much later. When someone 'travels to the future' of their timeline, what they are actually doing is slowing down their relative time to the surrounding area. Moments pass from the observer's point of view, but from someone outside his reference bubble, decades have passed.

The only reason Odin did not send someone to interrupt the time manipulation was that they were needed to balance out the evils that would form in the future.

The only problem with this was that the protectors were apparently going to overcompensate. At first when the future had a slim possibility of this occurring, He was not worried. But now, the protector who managed to evade the destruction, was manipulating events by using the illegal program interface titled the time gate.

The first ability of the time gate is to use the ygdrasil's monitor function. This is hard to wrap ones mind around, but practically ALL possibilities and realities exists simultaneously. Beyond the edge of each universe, there are infinite universes. Like the soap bubble universe theory. That every universe is like a "bubble" in existence. So if ALL possibilities exist, there is a universe, just like yours that is a few minutes further along. Or perhaps years? Or decades?. Monitoring ones have pasts matching the one you are currently in, gives one the ability to view many different alternate paths for the future of yours to take and make the events happen necessary to make the future you wish occur.

Another problem is that the time gate has the transportation function. The gate exists in the majority of realities that have Sailor Senshi. It allows transportation between gates, and subsequently, realities. And there is a huge cluster of universes that have them. It allows transportation between realities! Whoever is using it thinks that they are traveling time. The truth is they are traveling to similar realities at different points in their progression. Time can be sped up, or slowed down relatively, but one CANNOT travel time.

Odin rubbed his chin. What would He do about it? He could send a god or goddess to investigate. But the sheer manpower would be outrageous. He would have to probably find and rip out time gates from over half of the realities he covered! He only built his system over the majority of realities that had similar quantum designs as this one, after all he came from a similar one. Realities where gravity repelled and similar quantum opposites made his head hurt. Still, the number of realities he covered was somewhere around 1e(10e1,000,000.) Scientific notation. He covered a good portion of the sector of realities dubbed, Ain Soph.

Yggdrasil suddenly alerted him of a foreign energy, which should be impossible since all existence was under it's influence. Theoretically, nothing could be 'foreign', unless…..

An odd ripple appeared before him, as if reality was inverting itself in that very space in the Upper Realm of Asgard. Soon a body formed, in the shape of a woman, although not a very shapely one. Wild bangs became visible, darker than nothingness. Long hair became apparent along with a cape as distortion took substance. There were shoulder guards with large imbedded jewels and a simple shirt of two colors: gold and deepest of black. Pants of one color, a deep black went into darker than crimson boots. Slender arms where adorned with long white gloves that folded into a collar. Odin raised an eyebrow as the face formed, golden eyes and the palest of skin, the lips the black of the sea during a New Moon.

"Ah, Lady of the lake…haven't seen you for a few eons."

The woman gave a frown that seemed to make reality cringe. "The mortals of my 4 realities call me 'Sea of Chaos', how dare you cheapen my title with the word 'Lake'."

Odin grinned infuriatingly. "Why did you decide to take that form? Last time I saw you, you were more like moonlight on a ripple in the sea of reality."

A remote semblance of a smile graced the exotic woman's face. "It is a form similar to a little hellion of chaos who dared to summon and attempt control my power, despite her awareness of her own mortality. She has caused quite a stir among the demon lords of her plane. You could say it has… sentimental value."

Odin raised an eyebrow. "So what brings you here now?"

Glancing at Odin's interface, "Something similar to the problem you're having."

He gave her an inquiring look, asking for elaboration. "I need something to reset the balance. The demon lords are resurrecting their god, and there are few Dragon Gods or dragons to oppose them, having returned to me long ago."

"Why don't you fix it yourself?"

The Lord of Nightmares narrowed her eyes. "You know as well as I do, that too much interference would disrupt the fine balance that is required to maintain relative order and keep my creation in tact. My interference would be too drastic, seeing that even putting a small part of myself, Chaos, into my creation, Order, threatens to tear it from its hinges."

The Lord of Nightmares was a many-dimension being. In fact, she was every possible dimension. Odin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The Lord of Nightmares was the creator of her 4 realities spawned in the Ain sector.

In the universes in Ain Soph sector form a quantum system dubbed the 'Tree of Life'; a system where everything cascades from simple and vague, to complex and certain. Dimensions fold out from creation. Ain sector is a little different and formed on the quantum system dubbed, 'Lake of Chaos.' The 'Lake of Chaos' quantum system is a system where creation simplifies from incomprehensibly complex to more simpler forms.

Odin himself was once a powerful mortal, rumored to be descended of gods, having extra dimensional powers. His universe was in the peak of spiritual and scientific progress, almost to the point that they were one in the same. Using scientific and spiritual theory with his intellect, he created a method to access the rudimentary higher planes of existences using dimensional theory. Using this method he created an interface to the higher dimensions or rather most rudimentary. He was actually more a scientist more than anything else, yggdrasil giving him power. He could build things in the planes of 'divinity'. His system was a 1-D system, like a flat circuit board that took him eons of eons to complete. The whole system worked on the theory of the big bang, in that everything originates from one point in time and space but it is taken further. He believed every dimension originates from a singular one. In the beginning there was 1 dimension, that became two, that became three; etc. By controlling the origins of creation, the plane of god, it gave him power greater than any other. Using his creation he attached powerful astral beings. He and Hild were merged directly to the system he created himself. Odin was connected to the positive side, creation. Hild was attached to the negative side, destruction.

"So what do you propose?"

"An outside influence, perhaps someone from here, can help me."

Odin frowned, but did not object. "Creating a being of that magnitude and then removing it from this reality would severely disrupt the balance worse that it's already threatening to become."

The Lord Of Nightmares frowned and squinted her eyes thoughtfully. Her eyes lit up as realization hit.

"You can't take from your existence, and I cannot put into my creation….but I CAN put into yours. As proven by my piece of conscious standing here."

Odin's head spun. _Mixing two of the quantum Trinity? _It was mind-boggling. He could not imagine the possible consequences. The known sectors, called 'The Trinity' ( Ain, Ain Soph, and Aur Ain Soph) were incomprehensible. That was the only understandable thing of their nature.

"So…. You would provide the substance I need?"

The shadowy woman smiled, actually revealing painfully flawless teeth. She brought a hand up and held it out before her, palm up. Reality seemed to 'push' out of the way as something huge came in. Odin's eyes widened. It was quickly approaching his power. Dimensions unfolded from the object to past 10 dimensions.

He quickly hid his expression. _So this is the power of many-dimension being._

Soon a crystal without color, yet opaque and solid more than anything than existence gained shape. She set it on his desk. "Is this sufficient?"

Odin resisted nodding dumbly and stoically mumbled a reply. "Mm."

"I trust you'll choose well. Mean while, I'll talk to the spirit of the Fire Dragon, and have him 'prophesize' the coming of a great god from the GREAT TREE beside the SEA OF CHAOS to his last priestess. Isn't a tree what you use to describe this model of creation?" She giggled amusedly. She tapped her chin as she faded away, "I'll give them some sort of summoning or something…." She mused.

As the great being left, Odin sagged with relief. He then picked up the crystal and marveled at it's construction. It was a 10 dimensional crystal, complex and dense with energy.

He did not believe this crystal was possible. The amount of energy was tremendous. Not to mention the complexity. She expected him to give this to one being? What type of unbalance where they experiencing on the staffs of her existence?

Odin pondered over who he could possibly entrust this to. After a short while, all he came up with was a blank. He sighed and opened a window on his terminal, flipping through gods and goddesses one by one. There were MANY gods and goddesses. Every time enough people believed enough in a being, the very belief fuels the formation of the god or goddess into a being/force on the astral plane. On the astral plane, the only law is will and belief. What happens in the physical and Astral plane, echoes in the higher planes. Your very thoughts will gather into a form. Odin, usually when he discovered the collation of energies forming the beginning of a new god not birthed into existence from parentage, he formed and molded it into his standard template for gods and goddesses. He then links them to what he liked to call the World Computer.

As he searched he realized that his search as nigh impossible.

He muttered under his breath as he moved through files, "Who?"

******

Ranma sneezed as he lowered his leg from his stance. He had just finished going through an intense kata. He left the chaos of Nerima leaving a message that he was going on a training trip and didn't know when he'd be back. He had been working on his skills, but recently had been focusing on the spiritual aspect a lot more. He had taken a trip to a hidden away shrine, one that he had been taken away from when he was younger because his father thought more than any basic meditation was a waste of time. He had spent roughly a month there, and learned a lot about how energies work. He had learned to open his 'third eye' to levels perhaps even beyond the old ghoul.

Ranma took a deep breath as his sweat hit the forest ground and summoned power to take form. He had learned basic manipulation of energies, to make it more all it would take would be some practice. If someone could build a martial art from basic fighting knowledge, he could create spells and constructs.

As the blue light of his spirit gathered in his hands, he coaxed it into being beyond heat, and light, and forced more from the abstract and the astral into the physical. Flame burst into existence in the palm of his hand.

Ranma smiled at his achievement. Most mages, wizards, sorcerers, or whatever one would chose to call them could not achieve this feat with merely just their own energy. He, however, from his martial art training, had it in spades.

With a wave of his hand, and the release of his concentration, he decided to do it the traditional way: by summoning the energies all around him. He could only sense vaguely the energy around him, formed as he was told, by the lots of different sources, such as the residue of someone aura, to the light from the sun. Emotions are related to certain elements mainly because that was the type of elemental energy they corresponded to in the astral.

All elemental energy is just a slightly astral representation of the forms of matter; the abstract form. Fire/ lightning element is merely the astral or abstract representation of matter's highest energy form, plasma. Air element is merely the abstract of the gas form of matter. Water element is the abstract of liquid, and Earth the abstract of solid. Spirit/Ether/Aeythr is basically representative of spirit, the positive aeythr that binds (light) and the negative aeythr that divides(dark). Some people believed that it is representative of electromagnetic force, which coincidentally coincides with a lot of people's belief in auras being electromagnetic. So ether that binds is attractive force, and the ether that divides is repulsive.

Ranma summoned the elemental fire energy into a ball in his hand. This way was clearly less draining on someone because the majority of the energy used came from an outside source. He smirked sinisterly. His next opponent was in for a huge surprise.

He still couldn't figure out his curse, it was something different. There was water elemental there, but he it wasn't the same. All he could figure out was simple forms, not programmed responses and complex results. The way he was doing magic, made him a mage, someone who could force and direct elemental energy. A sorcerer supposedly used astral elemental spirits to do their work, in such that sense they were conscious spirits -although not self-aware- could perform logical functions. Could be 'programmed' for a lack of a better term, by the user's will. The high level of that type of magic was lost thousands of years ago. The most that can be done now is by Shinto priests, and that is just simple talking to spirits, not commanding or controlling. A mage can only perform complicated feats as he is consciously controlling the energies and result consciously. Mages can't cast any lingering spells.

Ranma haphazardly tossed the fireball he formed into the wood gathered for his campfire and watch it erupt into flame. He turned to go to the river to bathe when a sudden shift in energies almost unnoticeably washed over him. He almost shrugged it off until he realized that even though it seemed weak, it covered a huge radius, implying that there was a huge source some distance away. He couldn't sense it from this far, he wouldn't even have known if not for its remote affect, much like you can fill the wind of a storm on the coast long before you can see the storm. He started moving in the direction that this intangible 'wind' came from. After a few more apparent bursts he began to speed up, flying through the trees as fast as a cheetah would move on the ground.

*****  
Uranus grunted as she took another blow from the creature. It seemed to be made out of pure silver or something similar in a vaguely humanoid shape. It seemed immune from magical attacks and was being quite physical. It had never shot off any type of projectiles, magical or physical. It had inhuman speed, strength, and endurance on it's side, however. Already all the scouts were bruised and their magical attacks somewhat weak from over use. Jupiter and Uranus, the toughest physically on the team, were the only ones that could hold a candle to the metallic looking creature. But no matter how hard it was hit with their fists and feet, it didn't have a dent.

Mercury leaned against a tree, her breath ragged as she attempted to analyze the creature before them. It had came out of the blue and began terrorizing. The mercury computer took but a moment to analyze it. The creature had no sign of spirit or magical energy that usually denoted a sentient being, but appeared to have some sort of extreme source of heat in it's chest. Judging from the radiation, it was probably some sort of nuclear reaction, probably fusion with some new device that could harness gamma energy directly. Further analysis concluded that it as made of some sort of lead-uranium alloy. Lead in itself was resistant to magic for unknown reasons, but Uranium was the most heavy and solid metal known to man. Practically nothing short of an atomic explosion could hope to render it apart.

She looked away from her visor just in time to see Sailor Moon throw her tiara at it, even though it would not hurt the creature, it would knock it a distance away to give Jupiter and Uranus time to catch their breath. Mercury's expression became that of despair. She did not foresee them surviving this battle without retreating. But if they did that, more people would die. She took a weary glance around at the bodies crushed in the debris from when the creature fist began terrorizing. Tears began to fall as she gave a silent prayer for help as she painfully rose to her feet and began to channel the last she could with her remaining stamina.

*****

Ranma arrived in the Tokyo, the Juuban prefecture if he judged correctly, to a scene of destruction. It looked like there had been an air raid on several city blocks and part of the park he was now in. He crouched in a tree watching as girl in a sailor girl outfit, white with deep blue skirt and trim with black bows, scream out "Silence Wall" forming a wall of shadow between some Terminator 2 looking silver guy and two other girls in sailor outfits.

Ranma raised an eyebrow as he felt ether element, dark form, being evoked. He found it odd that the attack seemed about as powerful as her aura, and as the attack held, her aura barely diminished. There was no power being drawn from around her noticeably…perhaps it was from a god like some of the magic he learned at the shrine.

He watched as the girl finally drained about half of her aura slowly while two girls recovered. Suddenly the wall just vanished, and taking a look at the girl she seemed drained from her attempt. Looking closer, however, he could see her energy supply being replenished practically as fast as Happasai's with a supermodel's panties. Although it would still take a few minutes before it was back where it was when she initiated the attack. He returned his attention from the astral to the physical as he saw the creature slam through one of the girls who had barely got into stance before being thrown. It continued on, looking for all purposes to inflict mortal damage on the little girl with the wicked glaive.

Ranma's brow furrowed with anger. Who would pick on such little girls! That was when he decided to teach this thing a lesson or fifty. He cracked his neck with a quick jerk of his head and was preparing to jump when a stream of pink, which apparently packed some force, as the creature flew back 50 yards. Suddenly a woman with deep crimson eyes and deep green hair, and black skirt and trim, appeared in out of shadow with a tight frown on.

Ranma raised an eyebrow as he paused to take in her features, but continued with his purpose. Seeing her grand entrance, he decided he should make one of his own, slipping into the Umisenken.

Ranma startled the girls as he appeared right between them and their opponent. Pluto's only response was a further furrowing of her eyebrows. Uranus and Neptune, still trigger happy as usual, was about to release a pre-emptive attack on the newly arrived and perceived potential threat, but refrained as they realized that they were dressed too normal to possibly be some Negaverse general.

Moon started running towards the person, intending to push them away and warn them away. "You need to get out of here! Now! That thing's dangerous!"

She was backed up by several shouts of something similar from everyone but Pluto and Saturn.

Ranma turned slightly towards them, never letting the enemy leave his sight as it stood. "I know that. I also know it isn't right for this…this…THING to be picking on cute girls."

Several of the girls blushed awkwardly. It was an odd time to be throwing compliments, it caught them completely off guard.

"But….," Moon started weakly as she slowed down to a brisk pace, unsure how to handle the newcomer.

Ranma turned back fully to the creature, leveling a malevolent gaze at it. The pigtailed boy, almost man, cracked his knuckles threateningly. "Haven't had a challenge in a while." He took up a stance.

Uranus frowned. He looked rather weak in martial arts comparatively judging by his loose stance. She shouted out incredulously, "You think you can beat that thing with simple Martial Arts?"

A cocky smirk graced the young man's face. "Of course. After all, I AM the world's GREATEST Martial artist."

Uranus scoffed. "This ain't some joke kid. Get out of here. We don't want you to get hurt."

Ranma couldn't resist but turn his head towards her and grin infuriatingly. "Looks to me you were getting your ass handed to you a second ago. Two against one even."

Uranus let out a growl. "SHUT UP. THIS AIN'T A JOKE I SAID!"

Ranma harrumphed at her and turned back towards the creature who was now suddenly moving rapidly at him. All the girls charged, but realized they were too far away.

"NO!" Moon shouted.

Suddenly they watched the creature swung at him…and nothing happened. They almost fell as they suddenly stopped in confusion.

CLANG!

"Ow that fuckin' hurt!" Ranma screamed as he held his hand, standing…behind the thing.

He shook his hands while the other girls gaped. 'How did he do that?'

He took a kick at the thing, a sweeping movement meant to toss the creature, and not inflict physical damage because it would just hurt himself.

"How the hell do you supposed to beat this thing? It's harder than Ryoga!"

Several of the Scouts looked at him funny. "What's an 'Ryoga'?" One muttered.

Ami was still very unsure of this person…he didn't seem to have any magic. She turned her scanner on to him as she decided to respond. It was a force of habit mostly.

"Well, it doesn't seem to able to be damaged by magical attacks or physical attacks."

Ranma looked at her and frowned as the creature stood. "Well if you hit something hard enough, or enough times, it will eventually cause damage."

Ranma looked glanced quickly around for something hard and metal to hit the thing with. Bare hands were out of the question. He noticed the girl with the glaive. It looked to be of high quality, it even had an aura… it was probably enchanted or something.

"Hey, can I borrow that?"

Saturn blinked before he realized he was talking to her. "Um… I don't think…"

Before she could blink again, he already was pulling it from her unprepared fingers.

"Ah!!!" She cried out and reached for it…only for him to be already a couple of meters away, charging at the creature.

Neptune frowned and Uranus growled as the let loose their attacks.

"What do you think you're doing!? World Shaking!"

"Deep Submerge!"

Ranma frowned as he felt elemental energy focusing… coming towards him if his judgments where correct. He frowned as he though of how to quickly deflect the attacks without taking damage. He smirked as he charged water into the glaive. He batted away the Earth Elemental attack and followed up by channeling Fire into the glaive for the water elemental attack. They gaped as they watched him do this in what appeared almost casually.

Ami's computer picked up the change along with the boys aura reading. It seemed he was repressing a massive amount of energy. Before he deflected the attacks it only appeared as if he only had about a little more than Rei's chi…which would be expected if he said he was a Martial Artist, but this was astounding. He was what appeared at least as powerful as one of them. Maybe an outer.

"WAIT!" Ami shouted. The girls paused as they were mentally preparing themselves for yet another enemy. "Let him take a try." They all looked at her questioningly. "He is A LOT more powerful than he looks." Ami tapped her chin thoughtfully, "I don't think he's far off when he said he was one of the best. Judging by his chi levels, he is a good 100 times more than either Jupiter or Uranus untransformed." She paused. "Even you Rei."

Rei's eyebrows reached her hairline. "I didn't think that much was possible." She had trained with hers for a while for her priestess abilities.

Ranma smirked when they remarked on his power. "Heh." He returned his attention to the creature just in time to be smashed in the face.

"Oh shit!" Ranma cried as he spun around, slamming into the ground eating dirt. He quickly stood and spit out blood. "Almost broke my nose, that fucker."

Ranma was currently facing away from the creature when it approached him from behind. The girls were to shocked to see he was still standing to say anything.

Right when Sailor Moon gained enough sense to respond, the glaive lashed out, knocking it back a few feet. Ranma suddenly became a flurry of motion. All the girls saw was the silver creature roughly getting thrown around like a leaf in a storm.

Needless to say, many jaws dropped. "He is….much faster than us."

If the other girls were not so awestruck at the moment they would have snorted at her and responded, "No, duh!"

Suddenly the creature flew back 100 feet and Ranma appeared spinning to a stop, facing away from the enemy. "How'd you like my custom special attack. 'Hurricane Dance'?"

What the girls did not see, was the flurry of vacuum blades that would cut through almost anything… except this uranium alloy beast.

Ranma growled as he surveyed his handy work.

With the exception of looking a little less than shiny new, there was no visible damage.

"What does it take to hurt this thing?!"

Ranma closed his eyes and thought. 'I need to hit it hard… physically…. Earth Element!' Ranma mused over what to call this new attack he as going to inevitably improvise. It had to be something that sounded cool…. Ranma snapped his fingers and took up a rough stance. He charged at the creature.

"METEOR STORM!"

Ranma jumped mid-charge and flew several stories into the air. The glaive started arcing beautifully back and forth like a furious dance as Yellowish-Green energy flew in a rain. The whole area lit up as Ranma descended while throwing earth elemental attacks. He was going to give this his all.

The Glaive came to a slowing stop after a graceful arc to end right over Ranma's head. He looked as if he was going to cleave the thing in half, and cleave he would. A rumble sounded as everything solid in the area began to vibrate, even the scouts on a slightly noticeable level. A HUGE ball the size of a World Shaking appeared on the end of the blade. Everything seemed to be go dark, as if the only light in existence was the ball of energy. Suddenly glaive and monstrous ball of dark light streaked toward the creature as Ranma came within melee range. After that, there was only a flash of light similar to a camera flash on a huge scale.

The light cleared to show Ranma flipping with feline grace away from the impact zone to land on the edge of a newly formed crater. All the girls ran to the edge to look with him. Nothing was visible. They were shaking with excitement. The thing was defeated.

"Wait. I'm still getting an energy reading….."

The girls slowly turned to look at Mercury incredulously. The sound of shifting earth turned them back to look at the bottom of the crater.

There, and the very bottom center a arm was extracting itself from the debris. But that wasn't the most disturbing. What was is that it seemed to only have some scratches. Everyone blanched.

Ranma's eye twitched as he quickly began thinking of something he could do more powerful. He had given most of his energy, and wasn't up for something remotely close to what he had just done. Unless…

Suddenly a deep, rich, womanly voice spoke. "I fear I must attempt to use a forbidden ability." She would not allow for the scouts to die, without them, Crystal Tokyo would never be formed. It was worth the risk to the universe in her eyes. They were more important.

"No." Mercury stated firmly. "Messing with seldom used time abilities that you have no idea how it would effect the world or universe…. You could destroy everything!"

Pluto didn't respond.

She started to raise her Key-staff when Ranma interrupted, paying no attention to the previous conversation.

"I got it!" He would summon a massive amount of power from around him. Enough to blow a hole in the moon if possible. If he aimed it upward, it wouldn't damage anything….hopefully. It as the only thing he could think of. Or perhaps a blade of earth element so thick and sharp. Either way it would take a lot of energy to hurt this thing, apparently.

"Get back," he shouted. The girls were about to ask why when they felt as if everything drained from around them. It felt like someone draining the water from the bath with the person still in it. This was something big.

Mercury chose that moment to comment. "Um… you might want to move back…." She turned and started running. "Come on! This is going to be big!"

The girls felt as if what Mercury said was redundant… the feeling they just had spoke for itself.

****

Ranma felt incredible as he drew more power in than he ever had dared to before. He started getting light headed. His thoughts started getting a little muggy… It was then he realized he couldn't stop the flow! He couldn't stop drawing in power… it was like he had open floodgates he couldn't close.

Ranma's mouth opened in a silent scream.

****  
Alarms went off in Asgard's main control room, starting all it's inhabitants from their monotonous routine. The room looked like some sort of neo-Catholic missionary with a gold and white theme. The walls had rune symbols and everything was rounded, not a single corner or point. There was a tall, yet thin tree that grew in the center, circled with a golden metallic spiral. All around the room there were terminals and balconies hanging around the infinitely high room. Around the specific area where the universe was monitored and bugs in the system fixed, there were hovering platforms with elegant looking beings, goddesses, who were working on terminals that looked like futuristic harps and had holographic displays.

"Report!" A goddess that had short black hair with a blue diamond shape on her forehead and more slender versions of it under the corner of her eyes. She wore what looked like an odd black two piece bikini with an accessory of leather like belt-ribbons clasped with a belt buckle just above her navel and wrapped in a semi-circle around her arms and then hung like long and wide decorative ribbons, one on either side.

One of the other elegant and oddly dressed goddess (although most of them were wearing more elegant Celtic robe style clothing) responded, "There is an anomaly in Midgard."

"Specifically?" The Rose goddess Peorth inquired.

"On Earth. Reality Number 782185154."

"Earth?" Peorth repeated to herself. 'Did Urd do something stupid again? There _is_ a reason why she is only a Second Class goddess.'

"Details?"

One of the goddesses with blue hair responded, working furiously on the harp-like keyboard along with several others. "The source seems to be some sort of energy gathering that lost stability."

"Cause?"

"One moment," The goddess responded as she dug through the time registers. The goddess paused with shock before slowly responding. "A human…."

The rose goddess couldn't hear her subordinate clearly, she had spoken very low. She was sure she misheard. "What?"

"It was caused by a Human."

The goddess' eyes widened before she took a deep breath. "How?…or rather why?"

The subordinate blinked, trying to decided how to go about figuring that out. Then a light bulb hit her. With a few plucks on the keyboard, a large holographic display materialized above all of the goddesses.

"This is a visual replay of the scene a few moments before the anomaly occurred."

They all watched as a pigtailed boy battled with some odd metallic creature. While the video was still playing a goddess responded.

"Energy drain increasing rate. In a few minutes the absorption of ambient spiritual energies will exceed the Yesodic limit and begin affecting physical matter as well."

Peorth resisted the urge to curse, keeping in mind she was in the sacred realm. Although she did think of several chose ones she desperately wanted to say. She thought quickly as she watched the scene play out before them.

"Megumi, I need you to try to contain the anomaly."

"Hai," She responded and quickly began working through the system, looking for a suitable program.

"Athena, could you bring up that mortal's file and send it to me?"

After only a few seconds a display appeared before her. She quickly glanced through the file. It appeared this one was one of the few beings that were beyond direct control of the system's 'Destiny' program. His soul was too chaotic and yet ridiculously influential, Peorth discovered, studying his akashic record. His soul was like an imaginary number in the equation of the universe. You just had to sort of calculate around it.

"Ma'am! All I can seem to do is slow it down!"

Peorth began to sweat. It seemed they couldn't do it on their own. She hated to ask the Big Guy for help, she felt it made her look incompetent, but it would be worse to let this get any more out of hand.

She sat down in her rounded chair and pressed a few buttons. The display was solid black as she opened a com to his desk. Only the eldest gods ever saw his face before.

*****  
Odin hummed to himself as he was still flipping through potential carriers to bestow this power from the Lord of Nightmares. He didn't want to give it to someone who would abuse the power, possibly wreaking havoc he could barely contain since it would put them on par with other Original Gods, ones without Class and License designations, being somewhat beyond his system directly.

Odin had taken the time to interview a few moral battle gods who were based on fighting for what you believe in, but even most of them would probably be overcome with the urge to abuse the power. He thought about giving a very pure hearted goddess the power… but none of them were true warriors, which was what was needed. Otherwise, he would have given to Belldandy already.

Odin sighed at his dilemma. He began idly tapped his fingers on his desk when he was interrupted by a dull ring. He raised an eyebrow. He tended to contact others, not the other way around. He mentally allowed the holographic Com to initialize. A young Norse goddess, more Vanir than not, appeared before him. Peorth. He blinked. What could be so urgent that his system admin had to call him for?

"Sir?"

"Yes?" Odin responded.

"We have a problem."

Odin blinked. "You can't take care of it yourself?"

"No sir. We don't have enough power to contain an anomaly."

An anomaly? "Send me the data," He commanded.

From what he could determine a mortal who was apparently very powerful, and beyond his Destiny program actually, attempted to gather some elemental energies. Most of the time one would be trained up to that level of power… no one normally started 'magic' training with such a huge aura of power. By the time they attempted to channel that level power, they had excellent control. This mortal however, started with great power, before control. He had lost control of his energy. This was why gods and goddesses in training wore limiters, it prevented things like this from happening. Gods, Goddesses, and Demon Gods start with great power, so they were necessary for training.

Odin snapped out of his revere and tried to figure out what he could do to stop this. The system only shifted energies around. He could draw power from some part of the universe, but that would cause an instability there. Upsetting a balance to fix an imbalance is somewhat pointless. He needed an outside source of…

Odin's thoughts trailed off as his eyes settled on the crystal given to him. He quickly called up the mortals record and saw he was of utmost morality, although it was a little twisted and he was a little immature. He might be able to take out two birds with one stone here.

"Sir?" Peorth called over the Com, worried about his lack of response.

"One moment, child." He tapped his chin. 'How to go about this….'

Odin begin typing furiously at his terminal designing a program to execute. He scanned through the mortal's file with another window as he programmed. Apparently he had to make a few tweaks to the mortals character. The female side had to stay… Lord of Nightmares' powers were distinctly feminine, although not overly so. It would help for compatibility. But this mortal had an aversion to his female side. Odin sighed. There was a reason he was destined that curse. He was learning slowly, but that would not do. A little tweak of his thoughts should fix that. Ah… a fear of cats. A panic attack with such power would be disastrous. It looked like the mortal had an almost separate feline psyche. He would have to integrate that in. Now for the aesthetics. Corporeal form will remain generally the same…but the mortal needs dress appropriate for his station. Now for his angel…

Odin tapped his fingers. This would not be a normal linking. Normally a goddess had an angel attached to higher dimensions. A goddess was essentially a enlightened soul with an angel that is connected ygdrasil. In this case, he would be attaching the angel in parallel, because the crystal would already make have him at a high number of dimensions. But he needed an angel to connect him to his system.

With one last slam on the 'enter' key, he sent it to Peorth's terminal.

****

Code streamed down Peorth's screen in the control room.

"Sir?" She responded over the com.

"Execute it on the mortal."

"What is it Sir?"

Peorth had an odd feeling about the program in her gut. It was in base code, what mortals would call 'machine language' on their computers. The language used to make the very operating system. Most programs in yggdrasil were macros (Spells and the like), or user/operator programs (like a word processor on a PC). This was as base as an OS Kernel.

This program was not limited by the OS.

"Just execute it, and you will see." He responded in a gentle voice that ended the inquiry.

"Yes sir."

With a shaky hand, Peorth hit 'enter'. She turned and looked at the mortal on the overhead display. Reality seemed to freeze around him as it decided what to do.

"Sir… it seemed to have frozen?" She asked, her voice wavering.

"Oh. I almost forgot, here."

A crystal appeared before Peorth in midair, and she reached out and grasped it. Almost seemed to waver in her hand and put a pressure on everything around it.

"M'Lord?"

A stand rose from the platform she was on. It was elegant and had an insanely intricate design carved in it.

"Put it on here. This is an attachment for the compilation."

Peorth carefully set the crystal on the stand, and it flared, temporarily blinding her. When she looked again it was gone. She looked back towards the screen to see an Angel of fiery red hair with a tail and pointy ears, and slit pupils scream out of the mortals back. Wings with feathers alternating black and white adorned the Angels back.

'A…. a new god? From a mortal!?'

She looked down at the terminal to see the anomaly was gone. She turned back to the overhead screen to see what would happen next.

****  
Ranma felt his whole being rearrange at it was filled with immense and indescribable power. On top of that he felt like he was in several places at once as his awareness raised. As his vision cleared and he looked towards the creature had been attempted to attack and sneered at it. It was only mere matter. With a careless swipe of his arm the things was cleaved into beyond dust.

All the scouts looked on with awe at what looked like a being of majesty rose from the heights of heaven had come down and shown it's righteous power.

Ami shook, her eyes wide in disbelief, as her computer's sensors broke from the amount of power.

Ranma came back to his senses, suddenly aware he could feel everything for miles. He could see beyond the physical. He took the moment to look around in awe of the world; what it looked like with true sight. The world was so much simpler than he ever realized.

"Who…Who are you?" Venus stuttered out.

His feline eyes fell on them and his Angel faded away. Ranma looked down to see he was wearing a Chinese outfit similar to what he normally wore, but silver silk, with gold frogs to hold his shirt closed. His bracers were golden and his pants were purest blue silk. Over that there was a loose cloak of the deepest black. The contrast it had with the bright and pure looking colors was almost painful. The hood cast his face into shadow, but the outline was visible and his eyes

He looked at them bewilderedly. "I'm Ranma Saotome…. Sorry 'bout this."

*****

A holographic display formed in front of him informing him of a system error. Luckily yggdrasil was made in such a manner that blue screens of death were localized and didn't merit a restart of his system. Although the realities he melded COULD run on their own, the results would not be pretty. There were too many changes he made to what would have been that if not maintained would be disastrous. Yggdrasil was nothing more than a program that governed tweaked elemental quantum rules and shifted energy where he wanted it, unnaturally. Natural rules he bent for his purposes would snap back in place and things would not be pretty.

He looked at the error code. It looked like a hack into this reality. He'd only seen such a thing when the Lord of Nightmares came to talk to him. But why centered around the mortal? Just then another anomaly appeared in his very office. Realization hit him like a ton of bricks.

A voice came from the shadows. "It is time." A sharp female voice intoned.

Odin waited until he felt her presence fade. He groaned and hung his head in his hands.

"Oh crap."

*****

"Peorth." A warm, yet commanding voice called.

"Sir?" Peorth responded not breaking her eyes away from the overhead holographic display.

"I need you to prepare an emergency knowledge download for the new goddess."

"Sir, don't you mean 'god'?"

"Well, either will suffice for this one."

Peorth raised an eyebrow questioningly but did not press the issue.

"What type of download?"

"Emergency Goddess Training." He paused. "Full. I want everything a goddess needs to know downloaded NOW."

Peorth hesitated. "But sir, I thought you believed in learning on one's own instead of giving them the knowledge. Through that comes wisdom. Isn't that why we have Goddess mentors?"

"Something came up immediately. The goddess has a mission that will be commencing within minutes and she will need to know everything."

Peorth's head spun. So many traditions and regulations were broken in just the last half hour.

"Sir… I will need the Database Reference Number of the new goddess with complete access to do the download." Peorth turned to Megumi. "Prepare a Emergency Goddess Training download. Immediately. Send it to my terminal."

The goddess paused before executing her order. "Aye, Aye, Ma'am."

A hushed murmur spread throughout the command room at this new chain of events. This had to have been one of Kami-sama's more drastic plans.

Peorth loaded the new goddess' file. She was in shock as she read it.

**Eezoon**

**Deus Of Balance**

**Class: Zero**

**Type: Conceptual**

**License: Unlimited**

**Limitations: None**

**Sphere of Influence: Earth, Descendants of Earth**

**Mortal Influence: Level 10**

**Notes:**

***Former Mortal Human**

***Both God and Demon**

Peorth gasped at what she saw. The god had no Class level. Even the ones under third class goddess that were closer the nature spirits had designation. They were noticeable due to having no third mark on their forehead, much like Megumi and Athana. Did that mean his power was beyond the classification system? Another thing she noticed was something she hadn't seen in over 3000 years, even being rare then: A Mortal Influence Level 10. The most that deities had now were level 5. Just enough to allow for a god or demon to show the existence of higher beings and a greater cause. Miracles, or Punishments, depending on Karma, Destiny, and Prayer. A Level 10 Influence on the mortal realm was the equivalent of Kami-sama saying that the god could take over the world and rule with an iron fist. Thousands of years ago, humans began resenting the gods and feared their power. They grew tired of the constant petty battling among gods and demons that destroyed their homes and lives. As a result, Kami-sama began placing restrictions on gods and eventually removing them from the world practically all together. Most of any influence a god or demon had now was invisible and subtle on Midgard. Kami-sama also felt that humans should be allowed to reach their potential without the direct interference of gods hindering them.

_What does this all mean? _Peorth wondered.

And what Peorth did not know, was that Odin is fond of humans… because they were the same creature he came from in one reality. The reality that was currently called Asgard, so long ago no one but he and the elders remember.

*****

Ranma closed his eyes and felt out his new power and senses. He had no clue about what just happened. Although he closed his eyes he could still feel the approach of 8 people. The eight he saw seemed to have disappeared. He could see them. Even more than see them even with his eyes closed. He gauged their emotions. All of them had fear, some had wonder and awe. He opened his eyes and faced them, pulling his hood back.

Warily, the blonde one with odangos approached and stopped a yard short. "What are you?" Her voice trembled.

Ranma removed his hood from over his head. The scouts gasped as he reveled his face. His pupils were slit and he had odd marks on his face. Under his left eye he had a white yang with a black dot. Under his right eye he had a black yin with a white dot. Each hung from the corner of his eyes like tear drops. On his forehead the two were joined to create a yin-yang.

Ranma opened his mouth to reveal pointed canines as he responded, "Human, I think. Or At least I was. I was drawing in power for a massive earth spell and I lost control. I'm not sure what happened."

All the scouts tried the process this. They still didn't understand. Before they could ask anymore questions a light congealed between Sailor Moon and the new god. It faded to show the form of a beautiful black haired woman in a black two piece bikini and odd belt-ribbons.

The newly arrived goddess of nature took in the new god's form both spiritually and physically. She had to admit he was a fine work of art. He had the most unique connectors (the marks on his face) to yggdrasil she had ever seen. She had never seen one before of two different colors.

Peorth broke from her thoughts and decided to get the job done. Father must be in quite the rush if he needed her to do this. "Greetings, Eezoon. I am Peorth, Goddess First Class : The Rose Goddess."

The on looking scouts looked at her incredulously, with the exception of Pluto.

Ranma looked at her bewilderedly. "Who's Eezoon?"

Peorth smiled mirthfully at the former mortal. "Why that's you."

"Me?"

"Yes. That is your new name. Eezoon Deus of Balance," Ranma frowned.

"Deus?"

"It means god or goddess. Although that calling you that would be ineffective due to your dual heritage."

"Duel Heritage?"

Peorth smirked. "Full of questions aren't we? Well you have the qualities of both god and demon, yet neither."

Ranma looked at her confused. "What…." He stopped to take a breath and organize his words. "Why did you make me… a deus, or whatever."

Peorth frowned lightly. "I'm not sure. Kami-sama did not say."

Ranma squeaked. "Kami-sama?"

Moon gawked. "THE Kami-sama?!"

"Yes, the Almighty Creator and Father of All. I am here to give you the knowledge necessary to wield your power. Normally, you would get a mentor and train for a while, but for some reason you need to know immediately. You see, Kami-sama believes in growth by effort and trails; earning your knowledge and power. However, I have come to download this knowledge into your mind and to give you these."

Peorth held out her hand and ornate earrings appeared in her hand. On the end of a small chain there were sapphire orbs the blue of Ranma's aura. Around them horizontally was a golden ring. Ranma eyed her distrustfully. Especially since he noticed they required piercing.

"You don't expect me to wear those things do you? Only girls wear…." Ranma suddenly trailed off when he realized he suddenly didn't care whether he was female or not. He suddenly just…forgot why he hated being female. He rephrased his statement. "I don't have pierced ears. Besides that….why do I need to wear those?"

Ranma noticed that she also wore unique earrings.

"It hides your power from mortal senses and they restrict your powers so you don't have any accidents. You have to use a little concentration to use any power instead of just thinking it. It also limits full access so that you don't overkill. It is mostly used for Gods in Training, but most gods still wear them afterwards. You are new so it's best to wear them. You don't want to accidentally kill someone do you?"

Ranma shook her head. "I guess I understand," Ranma responded slowly. "It's going to hurt to put those on…."

Peorth grinned at Ranma. "Oh, this is painless." Her voice resonated as she spoke a command, "Engage."

The earrings glowed in her palm and Ranma's earlobe glowed. When it faded after one second, the earrings were no longer in her palm, but in Ranma's ears. Ranma reached up with one hand to feel his earrings. He couldn't even feel they were in his ears. They felt entirely natural.

Venus spoke up. "Um, what's going on here?"

Peorth smiles warmly at her. "You are witnessing the only accession of a mortal to a god since Hercules. There were only even a few before him in all of mankind's history."

She turned back to the pigtailed boy. "Now for the last order of business. The knowledge." Peorth hovered over to Ranma, and he had subtly shifted into a defensive stance, but he felt no negative intent from her. She raised her hand and touched the march on his forehead.

In a resonating voice. "Initialize Program Wodonkeme.. Execute."

A light formed between Peorth's hand and the new god's forehead, and all her marks lit up brightly. As the download was occurring Peorth reflected.

****

"_Peorth"_

"_Sir?"_

"_Add these files to the compilation for the Emergency Knowledge Download."_

_Peorth quickly scanned the files names. They were all the mid-level spells that required a password to use and High Level spells. Most of them attack and transformation spells. It even had advanced magic/energy manipulations. Usually a Emergency Knowledge Download would consist of low level spells and basic magic/energy theory and manipulation. This one even had a few classified extra's, such as dimension theory and Universe theory. Compiling these programs into a being meant that if they had the power… they could execute it just as well as yggdrasil. But Kami-sama had never done that before. Most mid and high level spells where executed by the World Computer. The god provided the power and the World Computer did the manipulating. Mid and High level spells were either too powerful, or dangerous to just give out to any goddess. So they required clearances and passwords. Of course some of the high level spells were created by some of the other gods. Urd's Divine Thunder she used in the Celestine incident was her own custom spell. It takes hundreds and even thousands of years of practice before one can design a program like that. Theoretically, understanding of energy and the universe is all that needed to create high level spells, but it takes experience to figure out the mechanics and effects. It's just like programming: You can learn all the commands, but that doesn't mean you can go straight to making an operating system. _

_Peorth realized she had yet to confirm Father's order. "Yes, sir." With a shaky hand she added the files to the old file Program Wodonkeme.v1 creating file Wodonkeme.._

****

Ranma felt …knowledge…. Being pressed into his being, more information than all the martial arts he ever learned. He felt his mind furiously trying to categorize and file it away. He felt woozy like when he had a little to drink during that Romeo and Juliet play. It felt like an infinite amount of information was filing in and it would never stop…….

Ranma's Astral form AKA Angel, burst forth, mouth open in a silent scream. She grasped her head in her hands as she writhed back and forth.

Peorth watched, starting to get worried. About a second ago the safe limit on the amount of information a deity could absorb in one download was passed. The fact that his angel also seemed to be in pain added another set of worries to her. She bit her lip as she hoped it would be done soon.

And in a matter of a few more seconds it was. Peorth removed her hand from his forehead and hovered back. The new deity fell on to his hands and knees as his angel writhed in a silent scream, her hair and clothes whipping in a nonexistent hurricane. All of a sudden it stopped A blank look came over the angels eyes like she suddenly died before she faded away.

Peorth almost panicked. If it wasn't for the fact she could still sense Ranma's angel recuperating, she would have screamed in a frenzy for Father to come down and fix it, and forgive her.

Ranma's groaned and swayed on his hands and knees before understanding hit. Some of it was still fuzzy, but overall he understood a lot.

He rose shakily to his feet. He looked around to see the girls huddled together and shaking. They were very unsure and fearful of what they just witnessed. He tried to smile at them reassuringly.

That was when an odd glow erupted around all of them, goddesses and Senshi alike.

Ranma tried to maintain standing while the ground shook. "What the…." He realized it was coming from the ground. As of yet he couldn't make out what it was other than it was some sort of incarnation of power.

This was the last straw on Peorth's current frame of mind. She panicked and took off into there air. Seeming to dissolve into sparkles as she teleported away.

Ranma realized perhaps he should do the same, Deity or not, but realized he need to save the girls. He summoned the power to encompass the girls in a shield and whisk them away, but the power was sucked away from him as he summoned it. He realized with a start that the magic grew from it and was now sucking stronger. He mentally pushed out all panic to think logically.

He looked as the girls tried to jump up and away, only to find their power drained too, going up only as high as a normal girl would.

"RUN!" One of them screamed. It was a good distance to the end of the magic circle. And judging from their speed, it would be far too slow in their apparently diminished state.

He took the time to examine their power.

_Ah…. Links to elsewhere. He looked up to the sky where their barely visible bonds stretched. He focused on sight beyond sight looking as far as a telescope seeing… a planet attached to the red colored girl of fire. Ambient energy from a planet. How could they manage that? You would have to be physically there to forge a bond that powerful,_ Eezoon's knowledge told him,_ But that would be impossible for a human. How could they get there? Let alone survive?_

He looked closer to find something more interesting. _The bonds are very old. Ridiculously old. It looks like one of the 'permanent' spells that eventually wear out if not recast. It looked like they could break if too much was channeled at once. As is, it just seems to only have about 48 hours worth of active channeling left. It also appears that they created high dimensional objects on every corner on the world. They seem to be part of the astral plane. It is a direct link… looks like they used a piece of their soul to forge it._

The pigtailed Deus snapped out of his reverie to find that the glow was coming from the ground and forming into an odd magic pattern. One that had lots of hard edges and did not follow remotely close to any of the forms of the ones he had just gained knowledge of. Not much longer now. Perhaps he should give it one last try to save those girls. Maybe he could teleport them….but that was assuming if he could summon enough energy for a teleport of _eight_ girls at once and that he could summon energy faster that it was draining it.

Ranma took a quick deep breath and began summoning energy as fast as he could. A good portion was draining as he was summoning it. Then suddenly it seemed that the drain got worse. Ranma grimaced. The more it drained the more the drain gained speed. He would never be able to summon enough energy in time.

He thought furiously. He realized he could just walk through space-time, for the lack of a better term. However, he wouldn't make it to all of the girls on time….

With this thought, the world faded away.

****  
"It has been done. My thanks."

Odin shook his head. "I hope this plan of yours works."

The Lord of Nightmares merely smirked. "It has been fated." She said with conviction before fading away.


	2. Welcome to Casa de Slayers!

**Eezoon  
**Chapter 2- Welcome to Case de Slayers!

A red headed and formally flat-chest sorceress looked on at the scene before her. They were at a place she hoped to never see again. Most of the place was destroyed from summoning Darkstar to this world. It was ironic how they returned here now to summon a savior for their world. Recently the monsters decided to start reeking havoc around the Kataart mountain range. They began attacking the nearest empires: Dilis, Kalmaart, and Zefielia, her birthplace. Her sister Luna, Knight of Cephied, has been trying her best to defend her home from the monsters attacks. So far they used mostly undead and trolls to storm the cities. What was puzzling Lina as the kidnapping of people from the towns the Mazoku's minions attacked. Occasionally a monster would haul off someone in the throws of agony, knocking on death's door.

Lina tapped her foot as she watched Milgasia and Filia cast the summon. Filia had taken the time to find the world famous sorceress after barely escaping an attack of a High Mazoku. The Mazoku had once again began making attacks on the remaining Dragons at Dragons peak where Filia met Milgasia, the same dragon that led Lina to the original Claire Bible. On their entire trip to the sea they had been plague by attacks of Mazoku, thankfully only the underlings. If a Ra Tilt couldn't handle them, Filia's white magic could.

Lina initially refused to help. Lina had had enough of her little adventures and decided to lay it low for a while. After all, why did they need her help just to go somewhere? That was until she told her what one of the little overzealous underling Mazoku told her that they had finally defeated the Earth dragon who resided in the Desert of the Destruction. Everyone knew only the Water Dragon was in the killed in the War of the Resurrection of the Demon King 1000 years ago. However not a single sign of the Dragon Lords was there other than an occasional prophecy to a priestess like Filia. They never actively helped humans in anything other than prophetic words. That, as in only the Fire Dragon. It made sense that no one saw the Earth Dragon, he was probably sleeping in the Sands where no human went, awaiting for the next war between God and Mazoku. With the death of the Earth Dragon, the balance between the Gods and Demons was shattered. There were still 5 parts of Shabranigdo left out 7. Now there were only 2 Dragon Lords left, and the dragon race was becoming a endangered species. Thousands of them together could not even match Xellos' power.

Recently another minion croaked about the Fire Dragon being the only one left. She believed even more in Filia's mission from the Fire God to summon a god from beyond the Sea of Chaos, from the Great Tree. She didn't know there was more beyond the Sea of Chaos. She thought that was the source of everything.

Lina grasped Gourry's sword as she watched the summoning. He had left her with the promise of finding a power he could use to protect her. Without the Sword of Light, he could not hope to compete with the enemies she would face. He said he would only get in the way and be a liability. He would find a way of becoming a proper Protector for her. He had left one day, gently pressing his lips to hers before disappearing into the sunset. The sword on her back represented the promise of his return to her.

Lina quickly wiped a tear as she looked at the huge magic circle that covered the top of the same main platform that Darkstar was summoned on.

"Lina," Filia mumbled out, sweat on her brow from her concentration, "Now is the time."

Lina was supposed to summon the power of the Lord of Nightmares to fuel the summoning. Lina was fearful of doing this. After the Darkstar incident, she realized the need to come up with something, that was not a "3 hitter, quitter" like Raguna blade. A couple of uses to close together, and she started internally bleeding. She has been using the Ruby-Eye blade recently, it was the same as Raguna Blade but drew from the Shabranigdo.

Lina took a deep breath. It wasn't like she hadn't taken bigger risks before. As she spoke her voice resonated throughout the room as she slowly walked to one of the two undamaged terminals that the Darkstar weapons went in.

_"Lord of the Darkness and Four Worlds, I beseech thy fragments; by all of the power thou possess, grant the heavens' wrath to my hand; unleash the sword of dark, freezing nothingness; by our power, our combined might, let us walk as one along the path of destruction: RAGUNA BLADE!"_

Lina rammed the sword of oblivion into the terminal. Suddenly a wind began to blow and a beam of energy blew from the circle upward and into the sky.

The two dragons kept chanting after squeezing their eyes shut from the brightness. Suddenly Lina was blown away from the terminal, and to her sick fascination, the blade remained and grew in power. Suddenly the light abated and the sword faded away.

When the light cleared there were 7 girls who looked like they were in the process of running, but suddenly stopped in confusion. They wore odd outfits uncommon to anything she had ever seen before. Behind them stood a single man standing, cloak flowing in the wind.

Filia gasped and dropped onto her hands and knees, breathing deeply. The blonde, green eyed dragon in human form named Milgasia fell to one knee. He looked on while taking deep breaths of air.

Lina watched as the one in the cloak looked around curiously with a frown on his face.

"Where am I?" The mysterious one asked in rough masculine speech.

Milgasia spoke in a smooth calm voice. "Are you all gods from the Great Tree?"

Ranma looked at her confusedly. "Gods? Great Tree?"

Filia looked bewildered while Milgasia watched impassively. Lina sighed. It would be her luck that they summoned some ordinary people who were of no help. The Sailor Senshi muttered among themselves, wondering why they where now in their ordinary clothes, projecting what could be going on.

Filia eyes began to water when the male figure spoke. "Well I guess I am a god. But what do you mean by Tree?"

Filia's eyes shined with hope. She ran over to him and went onto one knee. She took hold of one of his hand lovingly and answered, staring hopefully into his eyes.

"You are the one prophesied from the Great Tree beside the Sea of Chaos. The god from another universe that will save us from the evil that wishes to destroy everything."

Suddenly it clicked about what 'Great Tree' meant. It was using the Metaphor for the World Computer to describe his universe. Ranma grimaced. He loved fighting, but he preferred he had some choice about when and who to fight. He sighed and shrugged. He never did before, why expect anything to change even if he did leave Nerima. He already went to saving girls from crazy princes and ghosts, then to saving girls from enraged Phoenix Gods. It's only natural he would be promoted to saving worlds from great evil. Maybe he'd even move up to Universes! Ranma chuckled derisively to himself.

He opened his eyes which had closed from his thoughts and looked her in the eyes and shrugged. "Why not? It's not like I haven't fought deities before. And that was _before _I became a god."

Lina was filled with sympathy at that statement when she thought-

"Before you became a god?" Filia repeated.

"Yeah. I was fighting some crazy robot when BOOM, I got all this power and someone who said they were a goddess came down and was like, 'you're a god now'," Ranma rambled. "Then this huge magic circle formed and the goddess took off in panic, and I tried to save those girls but it was too late. Next thing I know we're here."

Filia blinked she didn't quite process all that the god dribbled out.

Lina walked over to the girls eyeing them curiously, before turning towards Ranma. "What do we call you?"

"Um. As a god, I was named, Eezoon, Deus of Balance."

Lina smiled at him. "Well, I'm Lina Inverse, Sorcery Genius. Pleasure to meet you all."

"Same."

The girls were to lost as to say anything until Lina prompted the girls.

"So are you just normal girls?"

Usagi suddenly struck a pose. "We are the Defenders of Love and Justice, The Sailor Senshi. I am Sailor Moon."

Rei elbowed Usagi and she yelped in pain. "Did you forget that we aren't transformed meatball head!"

"Oopsie."

"What do you mean transformed?" Lina asked, having overheard them. She was standing practically amidst their group.

"Umm…errr," Rei began, looking to the other girls for support.

Ranma heard Lina's question and snorted as she walked over to their gathering. The two present Dragons did the same.

"These girls are 'Magical Girls'," Ranma said mockingly. "They run around blowing evil things up. They are nothing but Magical Cannons. They aren't really 'Senshi'. Only a two of them can even qualify as brawlers, let alone _Senshi._" Ranma snorted. "Warriors my ass."

"HEY!" Makoto shouted. "What do you mean!"

Ranma met her glare. "You are solely dependent on your Magical Blasts, which aren't even your own power. You lack any true hand to hand skills whatsoever."

"I'll show you hand to hand!" Haruka shouted before she moved into a position to lunge at the new Deus. A slender arm extended in front of her, stopping her cold. Haruka met Michiru's eyes questioningly.

Michiru broke her gaze with Haruka to level it at the pigtailed boy. "You are right. We never did really practice any hand to hand. But it has worked fine until now."

Ranma snorted again. Lina interrupted, "Um, but you girls don't seem to have a strong magical aura…."

"We have to be transformed to use our magic."

Lina looked at her blankly, but decided to drop the subject. She turned away. "Well we need to get to Dragon's Peak, and that's a few months travel from here. We need to get started now." The sorceress turned to the two dragons of their group. "Do you think you have enough power to transport us back across the Demon sea to the shore of Lyzeille near Krimzon?"

Filia sighed tiredly. Milgasia spoke up. "If it were just us who came, possibly. But with the additional people…" He trailed off.

Lina sighed. "We could rest up here, but I don't want to camp in this place. It gives me the creeps. I was hoping we could make it to a nice camping spot in a few hours."

Lina tapped her foot thoughtfully. She turned to Ranma. "Eezoon." Ranma stared blankly until he realized she was talking to him. He would have to get used to his new title.

"What?"

"Is is possible for you to teleport us all there?"

Ranma looked thoughtful for a moment before asking, "Can you point out the direction the land is in."

The sorceress pointed. "That way."

Ranma nodded and her facial marks lit up before suddenly going dark again. "Damn…. I lost contact with the World Computer." Ranma's fist hit his palm when had an epiphany. "That's right. We are no longer in the same Universe as the system. Crap."

He began to pace.

"Anytime now…."

"I'm trying!" Ranma snapped. The girls watched the interaction intently. Ranma suddenly snapped his fingers.

"I need to find out how far it is. I think I can…" Ranma closed his eyes.

Suddenly an Angel of fiery red hair with pointed ears emerged from the martial artist in a flurry of black and red feathers. Wings of alternating black and white feather's spread wide. She was adorned in ribbons of purest white cloth and wore gold bracers. She was barefoot. As her body fully formed her eyes opened showing the purest blue of a dawn sky with slit pupils.

The dragons and sorceress gasped in shock, while the girls, having seen this before briefly, only watched in awe. The trio from this world felt an indescribable pressure they were sure was hidden power.

Ranma smirked at everyone's expressions. "I'll go see where land is."

The angel took off over the sea before streaking into a white speck.

"Wha….What was that!" Filia asked.

"A physical representation of my angel."

Filia looked confusedly at Ranma. "Angel?"

Ranma tapped his chin thoughtfully. In all honesty his angel was more like a familiar. "My angel is like an assistant to me, connected to my spirit." Ranma tapped his foot. "Well, it is and isn't. It is more like something that wasn't a part of me, that is now a part of me. Kind of like an extra arm sown on or something."

"How are you still here talking? You should be in some sort of meditative state or something."

Ranma shrugged, "I don't understand it. Besides, my angel has somewhat of its own mind or maybe it doesn't? I really don't understand it myself."

Lina whistled appreciatively. "Summoning astral beings, creating an physical manifestation of them and still being cognitive in your own body. Wow."

Ranma rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It is cool, isn't it?"

Lina raised her index finger. "But why is your angel female? Shouldn't a male element be more compatible?"

Ranma blushed. "Well…," the god began as he shifted to female, voice continuing in a higher octave, " I can be either male or female. I was born male though, so I prefer it. Plus, I like girls."

Ranma noticeably blinked. "Ah. Found that land you where talking about. I need you all to come close."

Everyone gathered closely. "Okay. Here goes nothing…"

Ranma waved her hand and there was a bright glow that formed into a magic circle composed of curvy patterns like nothing the people of this world never seen before. They all looked at it curiously. With a flash they found themselves on a beach when it faded.

"We're here." Everyone looked around. They saw Ranma's angel hovering with her eyes closed above them, her form lighting up the whole area with an ethereal glow. Suddenly her eyes opened and she smiled down at them before hovering down and disappearing back into Ranma.

Milgasia and Filia took in their surroundings. They were on a beach overlooking the ocean, a streak in the distance signifying the location of the portal still shone brightly. It was late at night and the stars sparkled in the night sky. The moons hung low in the sky, one reddish and one white. The sailors took in the vision, admiring it's beauty.

"We ain't in Kansas anymore…" Rei quoted. The other girls nodded sympathetically.

Suddenly the wind seemed to stop and the night went still. Crickets stopped chirping, leaves stopped rustling, and the night seem to dim although there was plenty of moonlight.

Lina shifted on her feet as she got into a crouch, eyeing the area around her. Milgasia's eyes became slits as they darted back and forth.

"Hey this is so pretty!" Usagi squealed, oblivious to the change in demeanor of the locals. "It brings back memories of the times I spent on Mars."

Usagi turned to Rei. "Do you remember?"

Rei was about to respond when Lina harshly whispered, "Quiet!"

Usagi turned towards the red-headed sorceress to retort about how much of a 'meanie' when Filia spoke up.

"I feel evil in the air."

"Huh?" Several of the girls muttered confusedly.

Ranma quirked his head. Looking around before looking towards the tree line. His eyebrows furrowed. Ranma shifted into a loose battle stance and closed his eyes, seeming to be patiently waiting. The others took time from their vigilance to cast an eye his way. Then suddenly there was a earth shattering boom and there was some sort of human shaped blur that flew into a tree at the tree line several hundred meters away. Every gapped in confusions. They had no clue what happened.

The figure stood shakily, illuminated by the moonlight. "How?" it gasped.

As they took a closer look it was a girl with white hair in a ponytail down to her knees with long bangs and a yellow headband. At the end of the ponytail there was a single perfect hoop of gold tied in. She wore brown shoulder guards that looked wooden and constructed of three separate pieces of wood. She wore a very tall and thick golden choker with a huge bell on front. Her arms sported a green sleeve from shoulder to wrist of golden bracelets. The young one had her healthy endowments covered by a flexible looking white chest guard. Under that was a simple look green shirt trimmed with white at the bottom and fell in a V shape across her front. Black leggings hugged her hips and legs. She appeared to have feline features, such as a brown tail that ended in a white splay of fur, and very long and pointy ears.

"Who are you?" Lina asked the newcomer.

"I am Aisha and I'm here to make sure you don't become a problem."

"How did you find us?"

"Anyone Mazoku could sense that amount of energy. Hell, even a human sorceress." The mazoku shrugged indifferently.

"And they send you to stop me?" Lina let out a sharp laugh. "HAH! I am the famous Lina Inverse, Defeater of Demon Lords," Lina said with more bravado that she actually had. She had help and a lot of other things those times. Hopefully this demon isn't one of those that can survive a Dragon Slave. Those are particularly annoying.

The Mazoku smiled a smile of teeth. "We'll see. Last I heard you were running tail from Zefelia on some prophecy from the Fire Dragon." She paused to enjoy the anger radiating from the sorceress. "But don't worry…. Hopefully there won't be anymore prophecies from that dragon soon enough."

God how Lina wished Zel or Amelia was here. They seemed to always be about to beat anything as a team. Or even…. Gourry. But they all were off fighting their own battles, defending their own homes.

Makoto whispered to the others, "Think we should transform?"

The others nodded. Usagi reached for her brooch, "Moon Crystal Power!"

Nothing happened. She tried again, "Moon Crystal Power!"

Lina, Filia, and the Mazoku looked the girl strangely. Usagi had a look of shock and surprise on her face before realization set in. "It… it doesn't work!"

"No way!" Makoto shouted. She tried her phrase and failed… Ranma rolled his eyes.

"That won't work on this world, girls. Your planets don't exist here for you to draw from."

Suddenly the all felt very vulnerable and it showed. Haruka huddled over Michiru and Saturn. The inners pulled closer together warily.

Lina suddenly screamed and charged the demon. Filia gasped and then narrowed her eyes in a fierce look. Filia's scream tore through the air as her tail popped out and she let loose a blue beam of destruction towards the Mazoku as cover. The demon merely faded out and reappeared in front of Lina.

The sorcery genius suppressed her shock and went straight for the big guns. The months of battles she's been in recently have taught her a simple lesson: hit hard, hit fast. In the past she wasted too much time gaging an enemy, leaving herself vulnerable.

_Darkness from twilight, crimson from blood that flows; buried in the flow of time; in Thy great name, grant the hells' wrath to my hand, unleash the sword of unending night, let those before us fall before our combined might! _RUBY-EYE BLADE!

A blade of red and black swirling energy flew and encompassed her right hand in the shape of a blade. She brought it down quickly and decisively. However this demon was smart and quick. Instead of fading into the astral plane where it would have cut through to anyway, she leaned back and stepped sideways, also taking the time to knock her arm even more off course. Lina tried a few more swings, but holding the spell was somewhat draining. It was easier to recast, than to hold it for extended periods. Lina jumped back and away, letting the spell dissipate. She landed staring the demon down, breathing deeply.

"CHAOS DISINETIGRATE!" A shrill voice broke through the tableau.

Explosions in the shapes of crosses pummeled the demon relentlessly, knocking it around. It flew back, landing with a thud, smoking. Then there was laughing. The Sailors moved closer together… unsure of what to do in a situation without their powers. It was the type of laugh that instilled fear in the now powerless warriors of justice.

The demon stood out of its crater like something out of a horror movie… somehow getting to its feet without using it's arms. "So this is the last of the Fire Dragon's disciples. Where is the little boy?"

The dragons eyes furrowed, and her tail twitched angrily. Her hand was held over her hidden mace strapped to her thigh. "What boy?"

The demon let out a bark of a laugh. "Don't try and play dumb. You have the reborn Ancient dragon child somewhere…. Just tell me… we'll put him to good use."

Filia lost it and swung her mace out of the confines of her robes. She was about to charge when an arm was held in front of her. She abruptly stopped and her gaze followed the arm to it's owner. She saw Ranma staring at the demon with a fierce look promising pain. Her anger was momentarily forgotten.

"Allow me."

Ranma walked with slow, confident and assured steps towards the demon. "I think you should leave." Ranma never liked to kill. Demon or not.

"Not without cleaning up some loose ends here," the demon said, still confident as ever. She waved her hands towards Lina and company.

Ranma frowned. "I'm sorry to say… that I can't let you do that."

The mazoku clucked her tongue. She raised a hand that appeared to do nothing, until it let loose a gout of dark flame. Everyone turned away, not wanting to watch the young goddess die in pain.

After a few seconds the demon let up, expecting to find a pile of ashes. There was none. It looked for the whereabouts of it's new victim only to find the area around her suddenly very bright as a ball of fire flew into her from above. The demon flew back and Ranma landed from his jump in the same spot the Aisha previously occupied. A scream of pain and frustration came from the demon. Somehow that magic had hurt her.

"How the hell did that hurt? That was just fire! I'm not a physical being!"

Ranma smirked. "That wasn't merely just any fireball. It was a fireball on the astral plane as well."

She scowled and stood, bruised, but not finished. She faded to black and into nothing. Suddenly Ranma's elbow snapped back and she flew into the shallow water of the ocean.

"You expect me not to see you, just because you are not physically visible?" Ranma shook his head ruefully. "No matter where I go, or who I face, I'm _always _underestimated."

Aisha stood, shakily. Realizing with horror that this person was powerful, and could see and sense the astral plane. No mere mortal was so adept as to knock a mazoku out of the astral plane. It must have been this person who hit her before… She had no idea who did it. She thought it was possibly dragon spooker before. The demon looked hesitant about re-engaging in battle. She could leave now to inform others of the unknown enemy, or risk the chance of never coming back to continue fighting. Aisha figured it'd be better to leave and come back with reinforcements. And with that she hauled ass across the astral plane.

It took a moment before everyone got over their shock.

Lina recovered first. "You let it get away! Now it will let every other demon know you are here!" Lina was angry enough to spit nails. "You have to get us out of here quick!"

Milgasia broke interrupted. "No. The mazoku said it could sense the use of the magic Eezoon uses. It would be useless to have him teleport us because it will just be like another beacon. We should run away on foot."

Lina growled. "Fine!" That meant to play it safe they had to travel on foot and gather help. It will take weeks on foot before they reach Saillune to gather up the cleric and any other help they could get from the white magic capital of the world.

They walked until only a few hours before dawn to set up camp.

*******  
Ami awoke early, as she always did before school. She sat up and rubbed her eyes while stretching her back. It as then she realized what ever she was sleeping on wasn't very comfortable. That meant it must not have been her bed. The former sailor of ice and water fluttered her eyes open to find herself in a forest with the other senshi and a few people she didn't realize. That is when it all came rushing back to her.

"Oh my god… it wasn't a dream!"

That was when Ranma came through the underbrush carrying some sort of elk.

"Hey, someone's awake. Ya wanna gather up some wood or something to cook this with?"

Ami blinked at him and slowly nodded.

"Be careful, I'm gonna go train."

Ranma's shout woke up the other residents of the camping group and they all groggily roused from slumber. They all murmured in confusion until their memory came back.

Ami cleared her throat. "Ahem. Would any of you help me get some wood and make a fire. Eezoon brought us food." She pointed at a dead elk laying nearby.

"Where did he go?" Haruka asked.

Ami shrugged. "He said something about training."

Lina asked, "Which way did he go?"

Ami pointed a direction.

"You go ahead and fetch the wood… I wanna see what this God is up to…."

Lina took off before anyone could protest.

****  
Usagi whined as she picked up sticks. "I just wanna go home. There are too many flies, and I'm all dirty and want a shower… And that poor elk. Did we really have to kill him?"

"We have to eat somehow." Haruka shrugged.

Rei frowned. "Hey, meatball head, pick up _dry _sticks."

"These are no good?"

Rei shook her head.

"What do you know!" Usagi stuck her tongue out only to receive a stick to the face.

Michiru frowned disdainfully at the grass in her hair. She must have been pretty tired last night to fall asleep in the dirt. She plucked the blade of green out of her hair and tossed it to the side.

The others trudged around picking up dry wood.

"How the hell are we going to get back? Do you have any clue Ami?" Minako looked towards Ami.

Ami slowly shook her head. "No. I don't even have my computer with me."

Hotaru spoke as she picked up some trigs at the base of a tree. "I guess we just have to hope we will find a way back. We have never failed before."

Makoto sighed wearily. "But we've never been completely without our powers and defenseless before, either."

"I'm sure we will find a way. This world may not be very technologically advanced, but it seems to be more magically inclined."

Lina stood at the edge of the clearing watching the most graceful movements she had ever seen. She realized he was attacking an imaginary enemy like a swordsman would… but without weapons. She had come across a few monks before that had trained unarmed, but never to this level. He was a blur of speed and power, yet efficient and without waste. That was when she heard something beside her and she glance to find the dragon priestess.

"Wow…" The dragon mouthed in awe. "You know that unarmed combat reminds me of the Monks of the Earth dragon."

Lina's ears twitched. "Monks of the Earth Dragon… how come I've never heard of such a thing."

"Well… the Earth dragon never had… priests or disciples so much as monks searching for enlightenment. They worshiped him… and his element. Hard and Strong were their motto. It is rumored the Earth Dragon foretold about the power of the spirit being used to strengthen the body. All it took was a honed mind, and you could eventually combine mind, spirit, and body into the ultimate warrior and sage."

"Where are these Monks now?"

"Well if the Mazoku are to be believed, they probably had a temple in Desert of Destruction."

"Do you truly believe they killed the Earth Dragon?"

"Maybe… it would explain the sudden surge of mazoku activity… having a taste of blood motivating them."

"Sounds like martial arts." Ranma said from his finishing position.

"Wah?" Lina eloquently responded.

Filia elaborated. "What do you mean?"

"Uniting body, mind and spirit is what martial arts is meant to do. What I was practicing right now was martial arts."

Lina mouthed an "Oh." She looked thoughtful for a second. "Too bad that isn't useful against demons and spirits."

Ranma shook his head. "Actually, when you get good enough you can access your ki."

Lina's interested piqued. "Ki?"

"It's the power of the spirit."

"You mean like.. Magic?"

Ranma shifted his head as if debating the answer. "Not quite. There is no patterns or symbols or chanting to it. It is spirit given will. It is your energy and yours alone. Magic summons energy from around the user."

Ranma held his hand up and a ball of blue formed. Lina could feel the pressure. She was somewhat sensitive to power from her magic training. She could feel the psychic pressure. It felt like pure unadulterated energy. Like the pure astral energy demons use… but not dark. More like warm and positive.

"This is ki," Ranma said as he continued his lesson. " Anyone could learn how to yield it with concentration and training. And since it is of the spirit… it can hurt ghosts, demons and the like." With a wave of his hand it disappeared.

"Filia… did you ever hear anything like that about the monks?"

Filia shifted uneasily. "I'm not sure… I heard they were powerful allies during the War of the Resurrection of the Demon King 1000 years ago. But as you know… whole groups and races were annihilated. It is possible, but their art, like holy magic to humans… was lost when they died in the war."

"Well hopefully someone survived," Ranma said, "I would love to learn from them."

****  
Every one sat by the campfire eating roasted elk, where the locals described their world and it's current problems.

"So let me get this straight. Dragon Lords and Dragons are the good guys here… but most of them are gone… and there are plenty of Demon Lords out there…"

"More or less… except no one is quite sure what happened to the other 2 Dragon Lords. Well, if the Mazoku are to be believed… the last 2 parts."

Lina looked thoughtful. "Well if they haven't been declared dead… I'm sure it is safe to say they are alive. A battle of the magnitude it would require to take down the remaining Dragons would have been heard of by now."

Filia nodded.

"Well, we should probably look into finding them. The more allies, the better."

"There might be some record in the temple," Filia began, " I'm pretty young so I might not know something the elders did. If anything there will be lots of records of white and holy magic."

Lina's ears twitched. Maybe she could learn white magic… but then again she was rather destructive by nature.

Milgasia responded coolly, "But that is on an entirely different continent. We are trying to acquire allies and make a stand at the Kataart Mountains where the Demon King of the North lies. The mazoku have been using that as their head quarters if rumors are to be true. All cities in the vicinity have been utterly destroyed."

"Couldn't you teleport there, Filia? You did teleport pretty far during the whole Darkstar incident."

Filia nodded. "But I couldn't take you all with me."

Ranma looked at her. "Well, then just bring the books back. So we can all look through them."

"I guess that would work. But I would have to skim through them first. There would be no way for me to transport the whole library. You have no idea the size."

Milgasia frowned. "That sounds rather inefficient. There has to be some way…."

"We could sail there… but that would put us off for a while. How would we know what is there would be worth the lives lost until our return?"

Everyone became sober at that thought.

That was when Ranma's danger sense went off. He looked around, his higher senses stretching. "There are a lot of…. Things coming this way. They reek of," Ranma searched for a word to describe what he felt, "…death."

"Undead." Lina muttered. Where was Amelia when you needed her? White magic was her forte.

"Elmekia Lance!" A streak of white spiritual energy flew towards a undead skeleton that came out of the tries. She may not be that good at white magic, but her spiritual wasn't nothing to sneeze at.

There was a squeal of a young girl from their group. They turned to see Hotaru being held by the hair and about to have her head chopped off by the descending sword.

"Mouko Takabisha." New magic or not… Ranma like the tried and true method and techniques. A blue ball of confident death blazed towards it's target… taking off the undead's head. Too bad that only seemed to disorient him, and did not make him let the young girl go.

Usagi wailed at the skeleton and proceeded to have a hissy fit with it, kicking feebly at it's legs. "Let Hotaru go you big meanie!"

Makoto made a flying kick at it's torso, knocking the bag of bones away except for the hand grasping the young girls hair, but the at least the threat of the sword was gone. Rei broke it's fingers to get it out of her hair.

Ranma frowned. Without their powers they were pretty much useless. He would start training them… so maybe they could take out mundane enemies… but there was no way he could teach them enough to use ki in even a year. Well… except maybe Rei. She had some training as a priestess… but she does not have the sheer amount a martial artist develops by subtly using it throughout his more advanced training. That was a problem. Maybe magic?

All this thought took place within a second. Ranma stepped through reality like it was a lot smaller than it looked, ending up on the other side of the huddled Senshi. He shouted, "Protect the girls! They can't fight!"

Ranma then proceeded to blur into the ranks of undead. Lina took that as her cue to cut loose. She whipped out her sword and began swinging. "Diem Wind!" A compact gust of wind knocked several skeletons into component parts.

Filia was letting loose beams of blue death, cutting through undead like butter. Milgasia was throwing blasts of magic left and right, avoiding engaging in hand to hand.

It took 15 minutes to clear out the 100 man party of undead.

Lina muttered, "Damn Necromancers….. Raising dead. Sounds like the work of one of Hellmaster Phibrizzo's former henchmen."

"What was up with that random attack anyway? We are in the middle of no where!"

Filia sniffed. "Well, pure chaos has been raining down since the mazoku came into the open. They've been raising the dead making armies of them to reek havoc. Not to mention the trolls and other easily influenced creatures. Anything that goes bump in the night is causing chaos… something that the mazoku feed off of."

That was when Rei walked up to Lina. "Can you teach us magic… I hate feeling so defenseless."

Lina looked at them appraisingly. "I can try… not sure if you can learn though. It would be better for you to go to a Magic guild or something to learn the basics though… I've never really taught anyone more than a spell before. They already knew the basics."

The girls looked disappointed.

"I'll teach you the art. You'll hopefully be able to handle your own against the mundane enemies." Ranma turned Lina and the dragons. "You too."

Lina scoffed. "I can take care of myself just fine."

Ranma raised an eyebrow. "All I've seen you do is throw magic around. I haven't seen much hand to hand yet. What if you couldn't use your magic?"

Lina grimaced. "I've been there before… and every month I've lasted this long just fine."

Ranma frowned. "Well, we will spar tomorrow. We should get traveling now."

"Mou… Are we there yet?" Usagi complained. She wasn't used to this type of punishment. She was sure they walked a hundred miles already… and the sun indicated it was still mid-afternoon.

Lina shook her head. The girl had been complaining for the last hour. She was about to start screaming at the girl, or devise some sort of voice stealing spell.

"We have a month long trip… you need to get used to this type of travel… we'll be doing it almost everyday."

"But I'm sweaty and want to shower and my feet hurt!"

"We'll make it to a river to camp for tonight. We can bathe there. It'll still be a while before we reach a city."

Hotaru was breathing hard and tripped over a root. The girls gasped. "Hotaru!" They all rushed to her side.

"Are you okay."

The short girl sat up and held her bleeding knee. She wanted to cry, but she refused to give in. She could be strong too.

Lina clucked her tongue as she turned around at the commotion and noticed the injured senshi. She approached and squeezed her way through the mother hens.

"I've got it." Lina said before whispering, "_Recovery._" A white glow came out of the sorceress' hand and flowed over the cut knee to heal it as if it never been. Hotaru's eyes shimmered at the girl.

"You can heal too!" She thought she was so weird and that no one else could do what she did. That she was some sort of freak. She conveniently forgot that she was also a sailor scout.

"Of course. It's a simple enough spell. Although white magic is not my strong point."

Haruka looked at the sorceress thankfully. "Thank you so much."

Ranma bent down and picked up the sickly girl, placing her on his shoulders. "She doesn't look like she handles exercise that well. I'll carry her for now." The young girl quickly fell asleep from exhaustion.

Minako got bored and walked slower to fall back to Ranma's position. He was holding up the tail end to prevent a rear attack to the defenseless girls. "So could you explain to me again why we don't have our powers?"

Ranma regarded the girl before responding. "I was still trying to understand all the information crammed into me at the time.. But from what I can tell it looked like you siphoned energy off your respective planets. One could assume there was some sort of artifact located on your planet that had a direct connection to you..

Minako held up her henshin stick.

"What's this?"

"This is what we used to turn into Magical girls."

Ami noticed Minako talking to Ranma and fell back to listen in.

Ranma looked thoughtful. "I'll bet that is what is connected to the artifact on your planet. Probably a seal that seals your energy. Your connection is a soul connection, so this probably isn't what contains the power, but just releases it."

"Is it possible to reconnect or power to something else? Something on this world?"

Ranma tilted his head. "Maybe… but I'm not quite sure how and what would you use as a power source? If you wanted to use local planets… we'd have to out into space to do that.. And we don't have that ability here. Well maybe I could….. But that still brings up the fact I have no idea how to reconnect your power."

That quieted the former Senshi of love.

"Maybe we could be taught magic? I don't see why we can just learn it. We used it before, shouldn't be too hard to learn some attack spells or something."

Ranma narrowed his eyes in thought. "Maybe…. Lina can give you magic lessons. But I'm going to train you at least to fight. We might have to leave you somewhere were you can be safe. I'm supposed to be hear to help save this world… I'm going to be on the front lines. Somewhere you three cannot be like you are now."

They traveled until a few hours after down before catching up on some sleep.

"Okay girls it's time to try to teach you magic. Since you used to use it before, even if it wasn't your own, you should be sensitive to it. This shouldn't take you long. I'm going to teach you one of the simplest spells so you get a feel for casting your own spells."

Lina held her hand, palm up before the girls gathered. Ranma watched with a casual eye as he leaned against a tree. His turn to train them was next. She began to explain.

"Okay most magic spells have something called Chaos Words. They help you focus on your objective and form the energy the way you wish. After using the words for a while, you will no longer have to concentrate and just saying the name will make you bend the power to your will subconsciously. Kind of like a subconscious trigger. Most spells use the 'spirits' of the element to do their will. So you have to not only feel the 'spirits', but visualize and project your expected outcome to them. The 'spirits' are merely wisps of consciousness that exist everywhere in everything. You can consider magic bending them to your will. You used your less, but more focused spiritual energy to guide the energies into shape."

Rei nodded. "Like Kami."

All the other Senshi except Usagi had realization dawn on them. Kami, to the Japanese, were spirits that lived in everything. Rei, because of her priestess training, thought she understood what Lina was talking about.

Ranma tilted his head in thought and weighed her explanation to his deity knowledge. Actually the types of magic humans tend to use. They bent 'spirits' from the astral side. Although something may be desolate in the physical realm… it may be thriving on the astral side. The human soul resides on the astral planes, giving it some influence on that side. The greater will of the soul, the more impelling it can be to astral entities. Not all astral entities are sentient. Most are actually more like thoughts and feelings… even concepts. Elements leaned towards feelings and concepts. Since the astral world is just a shadow world to the physical realm, or maybe the other way?

Ranma as a 'deity' was a being who existed on the astral planes and even higher. He was a 10 dimensional being. Even he couldn't explain it. It just was. But he was very powerful; not that he needed to be. But as such he could do everything that humans compelled astral spirits to do by himself. He could manipulate the laws of nature within the reach of his presence. So it takes much less even.

Lina interrupted Ranma's thoughts by continuing her explanation. "This spell is white magic. The lower level spells still work the same as elemental spells…. But for the high-end spells of Holy magic you have to be a priestess like Filia. For Black magic you have to have a high-magic handling capability. The simple spirits are not enough, and it takes a powerful being to give you the power.

"Now visualize a ball of light, glowing like a glow bug being held in your hand. Feel the spirits of the fire all around you, begging to be let shine. And repeat after me…

"_Light which burns beyond crimson flame, let thy power gather in my hand! LIGHTING!_"

A small globe of light formed in the sorceress' hand and shined bright even in the sunlight, casting away their shadows.

The girls lost their concentration as they watched her do it. She made it look easy.

The air was filled with chants as they all tried to cast the simple spell. Ami was the first one Lina felt actually reach for a little magic energy, it was like she slipped through her fingers. She was sure the girls didn't know that anything was wrong… or even see what was wrong.

Lina shuffled over to Ranma without taking her eyes off the group of senshi. "Do you see that?"

"What?"

"See how they touch the energy … but can't form it; grasp it. Strangest thing I've seen. At least it should form something and sputter out. Ami seems to have an understanding. She can at least feel the power."

"Hmmm….." Ranma cast his higher senses. He could see the spirits swirling around her. He moved closer to her and felt out the astral side… seeing her spirit stretch in its attempt to reach for power. That was when he realized she was sealed. Her spirit in the astral planes was completely shielded to ludicrous proportions. Her spirit would flex and reach for the spirits and they just got bounced off her shielding. She could not grasp it with her spirit. Spirits in the astral plane don't communicate using mediums like sound and sight. They touched, sharing information. To overcome someone else's will, you had to overcome their spirit with yours. Essentially surround and defeat. That is how magic is done. Your spirit absorbs the elemental and fills it with its will, changing it, before releasing. Ranma came out of his reflective daze to speak. "They are shielded from spirits. Maybe it is supposed to be some protective measure. Although, their aura's are concentrated. It seems like the shielding contains their aura and keeps it from emanating like a normal person. They have a huge magical capacity because their aura is so dense."

Lina blinked and looked closer. She couldn't see to Ranma's level… but she could feel the energies shielding around the girls.

Ami approached Lina. "Can you show it to me one more time… I feel so close to getting it…."

Lina shook her head. "Something is strange about you girls. You cannot cast a spell, but you have a huge magic capacity. Eezoon says that your aura's are shielded, you can't use yours to guide the energies into a form." Lina paused to gather the words, " The majority of energy magic users utilize is not their own, it is gathered from around them. However, they do use their own energy to shape and guide the energy. That is why we tire out. You seem to be unable to grasp the energy with your spirit. Quite frankly I've never heard of such a thing…"

Milgasia's rational voice permeated through the air. "On the contrary, you probably have. They are called channelers. They can only be used as a conduit of great magical energy. They have huge capacities… comparable to a dragon or even greater… but they cannot grasp magic on their own. They need power source that is connected to them. Someone like the former Swordsman of light had a insanely high capacity. That is why he was so good with the Sword of Light. He could easily use a large quantity of Darkstar's power. They need power that is directly attached to them; they can't gather energy themselves. "

Ranma looked thoughtful. "Hey, can I see one of your henshin sticks?"

Haruka shrugged and threw hers. Ranma deftly caught the object and inspected it some. He looked almost as if he was reading something that no one else could see. Everyone held their breaths as they watched. He looked toward Haruka. There was a link to inside her shielding. There was also another link that hung, torn.

"It seems you can only summon power through this. It is the only way to pull in power through. Untransformed, it is shut like a valve. You have no source right now, so it doesn't matter if you tried or not. There is no source."

"Is there a way to find us something? A new planet in this solar system?"

Ranma shook his head. "No… probably not. You'd have to go there to forge a bond powerful enough to hold that type of power. These things need a thick 'cord' . But maybe I could figure something else. In the mean time let me see all of your transformation thingies."

The girls all approached him and handed him their wands. He stuffed them somewhere the girls couldn't figure out. He dusted his hands and looked straight at them.

Ranma looked at Lina. "Hey, could you cast that light spell again?"

Lina nodded and did as he said. As she did Ranma turned on his higher sight and put all of his attention on Lina. He saw her aura in minute detail, images swirling around her soul. Apparently she was in love with some blond swordsman, and she saved the world several times. Apparently her karma had a lot to make up this life. He watched her aura and the energies around her.

Ranma turned to Ami. "Hey, try again."

As he watched he figured out the problem.

"Yep, definitely too heavily shielded. Maybe it was done to prevent being attacked on the astral side. It also looks like your attacks are part of you…done 'em so much you will never forget them, no matter how many lives."

"Can you undo it?" Ami asked.

Ranma shook his head. "I wouldn't do that. You've had it for way too long. Probably several incarnations. It's pretty entrenched. Messing with a soul changes personalities and may even cause permanent damage. I have no intention of doing that. Not to mention, your souls are probably so used to having the shielding, that its probably as vulnerable as a slug out of its shell."

All the girls sighed, feeling hopeless.

"Guess it's time to show you my power and my art."

"Oh god the pain!" Usagi moaned as she soaked in the river.

"I've taken some Martial Arts before… but never was I pushed so hard before," Makoto remarked.

"I think I've got bruises on bruises," Makoto whined.

"Ranma was… quite the taskmaster," Ami remarked.

"He calls this learning how to fight? It feels more like stand there and get beat!" Rei commented.

Haruka looked thoughtful. "One of my sensei's once told me, 'The life of a martial artist is fraught with peril.'"

In a world far away, perhaps in another existence even, a balding martial artist sneezed.

"Thank god that wasn't me!" Lina said with a breath of relief. She turned to find Ranma appraising her.

Lina shook her head emphatically. "No… Uh-uh! No way, no how, not gonna happen!"

"Hey… do you hear something?" Minako asked. "Sounds like a whistle… or something falling?"

The once proud sorcery genius landed with a huge splash into the river, floating up face down.

"Um…. You think she is alright?" Hotaru asked.

"Ummm….," everyone began, unsure.

Rei was the first one to approach and flipped the sorceress face up before she drowned; if she was still alive. They don't think anyone unshielded could survive that. One could almost see swirls in the place of pupils in the redhead's eyes.

"Are you okay?" Rei asked only to be blown back as the water seemed to burst forth from underneath the sorceress.

"_Levitation!_"

Hotaru was the first to look up. "Look," She pointed upward where the previously unconscious girl now was floating in midair, muttering curses.

Suddenly Lina shot back the direction she came with a cry of, "_Raywing!_"

There were flashes in the distance before a familiar sound was heard once more.

"Do you he-," Minako was interrupted this time as the airborne magic user crash landed back in the River.

It was a glowing, battered sorcery genius that stomped out of the pool. The girls heard a low mumble being uttered from her mouth, gradually getting louder.

"…_in Thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness! Those who oppose us shall be destroyed by the power you and I possess! __**DRAGU SLAVE**__!"_

Ranma was chuckling to himself at the young sorceress. She was fiery. He like that. It kind of reminded him of Akane. Except she was rational and didn't poison people with attempts of making food.

Ranma was brought out of reflection to find a HUGE amount of energy flying at him. It felt like 100 of Ryouga's perfect shi-shi hodokans. But there was one important difference. THIS energy was of more than the physical plane. Meaning it could actually hurt him; not just his physical body. He didn't have enough time to brace, and he couldn't think of any shielding spells off of the top of his head. The new deity's knowledge was still fuzzy. He thought furiously as it approached. With a last second of thought he moved his arm on reflex, which seemed to distort through reality as he swung it up. Somehow even though it was faster than the eye could track it was visible.

The barreling fireball of distilled evil flew upwards into the sky exploding, temporarily making night into a day on a planet with a red sun.

"WuuuuhAAAAA?" Lina stated articulately. She had never seen someone outright _deflect _a Dragu-Slave before. That was insane. He was a lot more powerful than she even believed. He was their hope.

The senshi looked curiously at sorceress as she gaped in awe.

"Um… why is she gaping? He deflected a fireball. What's the big deal about that? He's a god right?" Rei remarked.

"Something tells me it was more than that…" Ami ventured.

Lina realized there were people talking around her as her shock started to abate. She turned towards them.

"He _is _our savior."

"Well you summoned him for that right?" Hotaru asked.

"And dragged us along, powerless," Minako muttered.

"That was power summoned from the most powerful demon lord in this world. That's the second most powerful spell in all of black magic. Even his five direct underlings couldn't have deflected it. Take it, yes. Move or deflect, no. I'm the only one who knows the most powerful spell in black magic. I created it. It summons power from the very source of chaos from which all came…. The Lord of Nightmares. It was what it took to defeat one piece of the Demon Lord before. The spell is so powerful, that if I lost control of it could turn the world into nothingness."

"Oh…" The girls responded with a little better understanding.

That was when Ranma landed behind Lina.

"What the hell was that?" Ranma shouted, scaring Lina out of her wits as she didn't hear his approach. She let it a shrill scream and slapped him.

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" She held her chest as she tried to get her heart rate back to normal.

Ranma turned his nose up at her. "What was that?"

"The Dragu-Slave. The second most powerful spell in black magic. It summons power directly from the Demon Lord we are trying to defeat."

"Oh. That wasn't that much. But it would have hurt if it had hit, I think. I'm not sure. That was the first multi-dimensional attack I've ever had against me. It scared me shitless."

Lina shook her head. "I've seen people weaker than you take it straight. It would have been a scratch on you."

Ranma shrugged his shoulders indifferently.


	3. POWER! Eezoon's Gift

Eezoon  
Chapter 3 – POWER! Eezoon's gift

The next few weeks were rough on the girls as they trained hard everyday, and most were making progress, even Usagi. Although she couldn't be called graceful yet, she could be called almost coordinated. They got attacked a few times and even Lina by was worn thin by now. They got attacked at least once a day as they approached Krimzon. Haruka now sported a new scar on her cheek. They could only hope the town it was still there.

Slowly but surely they made it to around where the city of Krimzon would be. As they got closer the amount of enemies fought and avoided went up proportionately. They were hidden among brush on a cliff that over looked the city. What they saw sickened them. Hotaru gagged and vomited, while Michiru held her hair. Usagi's expression hardened to the stone cold furiousness similar to that of a monarch past millennia ago.

They saw people being whipped and beaten to within an inch of their life by undead, carrying large barrels of slop to feed the masses. Screams of agony filled the air. Ranma saw there was one person hanging dead, skinned alive. Once what was a beautiful castle and surrounding village, was now mostly burned down; not anywhere decent enough to call shelter. People caught falling asleep were whipped and kicked. There were dead bodies that weren't bothered to be cleaned up laying around on the ground amidst all the beating and pointless slaving. Even women and children.

It was all Ranma could do to contain himself from bursting into a flame of fury.

"Wait here. I will signal when I determine who is the mastermind of all of this."

Ranma promptly disappeared from human senses.

"I didn't know he could do that." Lina remarked.

"How will we know his signal?" Michiru asked.

****  
The death and suffering was suffocating. It was then he heard a cackling laugh that made the shackles on his neck rise.

Ranma made towards that direction, to finding a person sitting upon a throne of scorched skulls. The demon looked Gorilla with tar covered fur and bloodshot eyes. It looked menacingly strong. It seemed to sniff the air for a moment before standing defensively.

"Who's there!"

Ranma chose that moment to appear He abruptly shot a ki blast through the roof of the dilapidated building, hoping the others caught the meaning.

"Who are you?" The mazoku asked, wary of the unknown challenger.

"I'm your killer." Ranma spat, never thinking in his life he would desire to kill something so fully.

The demon seemed taken aback before letting out a deep chuckle. "Foolish sorcerer. You will fall like all before you." With that he grasped his fist and slammed it down into the floor. Ranma merely stood there letting all the debris bounce off of him like a steel statue, all the while staring with unmerciful eyes at the mazoku.

"Your mistaken if you think I'm a mere sorcerer." Ranma slowly started walking towards him while speaking. "I'm a martial artist, warrior, god-slayer, mage, and most recently," Ranma calmly stated, "a god."

The mazoku scoffed. "You? A god? Don't make me laugh. I sense some sort of power... but you are mortal."

"Don't believe me? Let's start from the top."

Ranma blurred and suddenly the demon went flying through the wall, only to get caught outside with a roundhouse to the face. He skid in the dirt. The fighting between the undead and the others took pause to turn an eye towards the fight. "That was martial artist and warrior."

The demon growled and charged him. Ranma casually bobbed and weaved around his attacks before doing a pirouette, gracefully spinning and bring his fist up almost casually. "Hiryou Shoten Ha!"

The demon flew up into the air… feeling at odds with the clashing spiritual energies. Suddenly, "Mouko Takabisha!" The demon caught a face full of painfully sweet confident energy that made him want to metaphorically heave. He teleported out of the twister to behind Ranma, only to catch an elbow to the face.

"That was me as a god-slayer. And this is me as a god."

Ranma's angelic form burst forth from him, wings spread, cat-like ears slicked back in an aggressive manner, and in a rough stance. The mazoku was confused now and tried to enter the astral plane and attack there. Ranma's angel seemed to start to blend in like a chameleon before disappearing all together. Screams seem to resonate through the area, and suddenly a tear in reality formed, the gorilla demon falling out, arm gone and spewing a black miasma. Ranma's angel hovered out, hands held in a clawing position. That was when Ranma walked up and picked him up by his throat.

"Things like you don't deserve to live." As Ranma's anger rose, the air around him seemed to darken, and sparkling blue eyes became dark black. He reached up to one his ears, removing an earring. Suddenly Ranma's form-distorting cloak disappeared, and his shirt became a silver silk with gold frogs. His bracers were simple, gold and smooth. The pants were purest blue of silk. Marks hidden before became visible on his face, a yin-yang on his forehead, two opposite halves like tear drops under his eyes. A staff formed in his grasp from the earring. It was a simple staff; long and slender silver, topped with ring with a 3-D yin-yang ball hovering around inside of it. Black energy began to crackle up and down the staff, making sizzling sounds. The mazoku looked down at his enemy for the first time with true fear for his existence. He felt sizable dark power much greater than his own.

Ranma didn't know what came over him, but he felt cold flow over his heart like a glacier, the air thicken around him like a molasses as he wished to inflict more and more pain to this demon for his atrocities. It became more and more appealing to him as the darkness thickened around him. He brought the staff in a whistling arc, chopping of one leg and listening to the demon scream as his stump spewed a dark miasma. His eyes became more feline, ears more pointed and his skin paled as his demon side began emerging. His shirt became gray with black frogs, and his pants also turned midnight. Another whistle and another scream. It came down to a only a head connected to a body. That was when Ranma dropped him. He stepped on the demon and twisted.

"Die you filth." Ranma raised his staff and brought the butt down to piece through the mazoku's chest. The demon seemed to dissipate with a lingering scream. His battle had taken them near his allies and every one of his allies in battle swallowed, never seeing this side of the god as he stared at the dissipating demon coldly. Slowly color returned to his skin, light returned to the air, and color to his eyes. Ranma's clothes regained their radiant colors while his angel slowly relaxed, turning to look more cute and beautiful, and less like an angel of feline death. Then it's ears twitched, and it made a slashing motion towards a building. The angel hissed angrily. Ranma reflected it's mood with a frown.

"Someone powerful was watching and got away. I'm not that good about astral plane travel yet. Blame it on being born human."

At this point all of the undead began running away…. In the same direction, likely the one they came from before this city. Lina wasn't letting them get away.

With a, "_Dragu-Slave__._" another crater was formed, and 90 percent of the undead were returned to their graves.

With this city destroyed, Lina persuaded them to go south to the city of Sairag to gain a new ally in Syphiel.

"You want to what?" Ranma looked at Lina curiously.

"Summon your power. The Dragu-Slave draws its power from Ruby Eye Shabraningdo, and currently is the most powerful attack I can safely use in my arsenal at the moment. Problem is, when it comes down to it, it won't work on his lords and definitely not himself. It's like asking him to hit himself. Doesn't do a thing."

Ranma tilted his head thoughtfully before nodding with understanding.

Lina continued, "So if I could summon your power for an attack, It would probably equal, or even more power than a Dragu-Slave."

"Okay… so how do I give you power?"

Lina tapped her chin, gathering her words. "Well, I can draw from you if I have an understanding of your nature and character. Then I can find you on the astral side, and tug on your astral power. I have to have a decent understanding of the nature of the power and it's owner I'm drawing from. I've been around you long enough… I think I can do it. Just let it go when you feel the tug. Technically, part of you inhabits me during the spell, so you will know the intentions and heart of anyone summoning your power. So you can control who uses your power, in case you were worrying."

Ranma nodded, although he still didn't fully understand.

"I'm going to try to feel your astral power now." Lina closed her eyes and thought about Ranma, good and bad, bright and dark, picturing him in her minds eye. After a few minutes she felt him generally, but still didn't have a bead on him yet. She furiously thought about what she was missing. Then she remembered he had multiple forms. She quickly envisioned the terribly beautiful angel that was Ranma's astral form and suddenly she saw it in her minds eye. She imagined the feeling of Ranma's aura and… An unnatural blue moon, glowing with radiant energy over a lake dark as oil, the moon reflecting beautifully off of it as it gently rippled. She found her imaginary self floating in the water of midnight, basking in the glow of the blue moon. It felt very similar to the Lord of Nightmare's power. She almost got lost in it like the Lord of Nightmare's power, which was why it was so hard a power to control.

Ranma felt like someone was trying get in and swim in his aura. He had to resist throwing her out; he wasn't sure what could happen to her if he did that. It was then he felt like someone was trying to pull on his aura like when Hinako-sensei drained him, but on a much smaller level. He felt like he was in two places at once, feeling like he was in her body and soul as suddenly she was bathed in his aura and presence.

"Eezoon Flare!"

A confident blue blast of energy went flying like a kamehameha from Dragonball with black and white swirling around in it. It streaked across the field for a over a mile and exploded upward in pillar of energy, destruction and fire as far as the eye could see.

Lina was slightly out of breath and shaking a little bit. That was a lot of power. His power was a lot more manageable than the Lord of Nightmare's power, so she could summon a lot more. That was probably a fourth as powerful as a Giga-Slave. With that, she might be able to even fell Xellos with one shot! Maybe not kill, but definitely take him out of battle.

She flexed her arm and gripped her bicep. "Lina Inverse, the greatest Sorcery Genius ever!" With that almost Kodachi like laugh erupted from her throat. It made Ranma distinctly uncomfortable.

Ranma felt a familiar type of dark presence approaching.

"We have company…." Ranma said, cutting through her laughing.

Lina immediately sharpened up, her eyes narrowing. "I think they can sense any major use of your power, but then again you could probably see that 200 miles away."

"I've heard something of you." Ranma startled a little, but hid it well. He had sensed his presence, but not the exact place. Ranma was still new to his higher senses. Lina and Ranma turned to face the new figure.

The figure had blue tinted white hair that that was moderately short, and two locks hung on either side of his face. He wore blue tinted shades and had cool eyes. His expression was flat. The new Mazoku's clothes consisted of a blue vest and white pants, covered up to the knee with shin guard. He wore a sky blue robe that hung freely from his waist with box-shaped shoulder boards that where dark blue underneath and on the outside of the sleeves. White gloves with bulky cuffs were worn upon his hands and had metal knuckles. A white clasp held the robe on across his neck, and similar clasps where on the outside of his arm just below the shoulder boards, across his robe's back, and at the ankle of his over-sized blue boots.

"You are an enigma., " he stated solemnly. "Who are you?"

"Someone you don't wanna fuck with," Ranma spat cockily.

"Is that so…"

"Hey, don't you supposed to give your name first?"

The Mazoku's chuckled seemed to scare the world into silence. "They call me Wizard."

Lina searched her head for the name and drew a blank. "Just another high class Mazoku? Whoopity Doo," the sorceress said sarcastically.

The figure actually smiles, "Oh you won't find me as easy as the others before me, Dragon Spooker. I am the newest general of Deep Sea Dolphin." His teeth began to show in his smile as he saw her pale and tense.

"I didn't know they could make more… doesn't that cost a lot of energy? You Mazoku have to give a portion of yourself to create another being."

The demon nodded slowly. "But we've come up with methods to get more power."

Lina suddenly remembered the torture at Krimzon. That was what they were doing. Collecting all the negative energy. This could be bad. They have been strengthening, while the dragons and dragon lords have been being killed.

"Oh god…" Lina gasped.

"What?" Ranma asked, never taking his eye of the demon.

"They have been torturing people and gathering all the energy from their despair and pain. That is what Mazoku feed off of – the destructive feelings in one's heart."

Ranma blinked slowly before comprehension donned on him. The air around him began to get heavy like molasses, his eyes became feline, ears getting pointy, and nails getting longer. The deity's eye color started to dull but not yet holes of black. Ranma held off some of his anger for a moment.

The demon looked taken aback before narrowing his eyes at the newcomer. "That's quite the energy you are putting out there. Sure you don't want to help us?"

"As if I ever would help scum like you." Ranma coldly responded. The demon seemed amused by his response.

Suddenly the mazoku was blind sided by blue death and a gold dragon with a bow tied to it's tail sailed by.

The demon spun and growled. "DIE!" The demon raised his head abruptly in a sharp upwards motion and a geyser of scalding water hit the dragon full-on, making it fall over into the trees.

"FILIA!" Lina screamed.

"_DYNAST BREATH!_" Lina screamed as she caste a spell from another of Ruby-Eyes lord. Instantly ice crystallized on him, and for a moment he seemed captured.

Then he seemed to walk through the ice like it was just a projection, not a physical impediment. "Pitiful."

Ranma went into a tense horse stance and suddenly his angel screamed from him, ferocious like a tiger. It flew towards the demon, claws first. Ranma found that his angel was far better at dealing with these beings who resided primarily on the astral plane. That was probably because his angel was the same. The demon looked confused and smirked. It couldn't be hurt by physical attacks.

Pain exploded in the Mazoku as his arm was removed from his person. He screamed and grasped the gaping hole spewing darkness.

Suddenly he faded out and there was a scream. Ranma was a blur as he rushed back to camp were he left the girls to relax and recover from that day of travel and training.

"_Raywing!_" Lina quickly followed.

They got there to find Haruka broken and bleeding, and Michiru's face covered in blood. She laid sprawled face down. She was conscious, facing the mazoku and swing her arm desperately.

"Please let her go! Please! I'll do anything….You can have me instead!" How the former senshi longed for her power! She felt entirely helpless. The other girls warily stood around the enemy, who was holding Hotaru captive.

Ranma took a step forward.

"Ah, ah, ah! One more move and this little girl is good as dead. Better yet… perhaps I'll curse her."

"_Elmekia Flame._" A calm voice cut through the tableau, engulfing the mazoku in spiritual flames many more times than a human could produce with the same spell.

Ranma took that chance to land a flying kick to the demon to get it away from the helpless girls. It smashed through many trees, carving a line through the forest.

Lina quickly concentrated, muttering random words, still trying to find a set of words for the spell.

"_EEZOON FLARE!"_

Again a pillar of fury formed, an ethereal scream cutting through the air before stopping.

Ranma eyed the crater, searching with his senses for any leftover trace. "He's gone." The god slowly let the tenseness drain away.

Lina quickly ran to the felled girls, pushing the others out the way. She reset Haruka's arm, which woke her up with a scream, then set her leg with a grating sound punctuated with another scream. The other senshi flinched. She place one hand on each appendage and began healing. Haruka felt the pain go away, but it still felt off. She tried to move her hand after Lina finished, and felt a sharp pain.

"Careful. I'm not powerful enough in white magic to heal you to one hundred percent." Haruka nodded.

Lina stood and turned to find the black haired, former hostage, Hotaru with her hands on the green haired senshi's head, pulsating white. Lina's lips pursed to say something in her confusion. Ranma cut her off.

"She is not using 'magic'. She is gathering ambient chi and channeling it, accelerating the healing process. Michiru's wounds are mostly superficial."

The god knelt beside Haruka. He laid his hand on her arm and she almost jerked away. He felt her uncomfortable with male touch. He shifted female, and she slowly relaxed. "Any reason you fear a man's touch? Besides the fact you like girls?"

Haruka's eyes looked dark for a second before looking away. "I don't want to talk about it."

"_Restore._"A weaving and curvy pattern of bright white covered the blonde's body before disappearing. Haruka moved her arm to feel no pain and everything was in place.

Ranma sprouted and wings and flew off, shortly returning with a dragon, starting to look like a lobster with it's third degree burns. It was unconscious. He repeated the spell with the dragon.

Ranma stood and walked towards a tree, turning it into sawdust with a punch.

"You girls are just turning into a liability! And it will be awhile before we find somewhere safe we can drop you girls off."

"If there is even such a thing..." Lina mumbled sadly.

The girls dropped their heads. That was when a rumble was heard. "Make them priestesses and then they could use your power."

The dragon shrunk in form to form the dragon girl they were all used to and she sat up slowly.

"What?"

"Make them priestesses."

"If this was an option before, why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't think it was possible. You aren't from this world… I thought things might work too different. But then I saw Lina-san cast a spell with your power….."

Lina tapped her foot muttering to herself in thought before nodding. "I guess that makes sense."

"We should do it as soon as possible. Could it be done tomorrow?"

Filia nodded.

The party found an area filled with dirt, and Filia set them to work grinding up blossoms from trees.

"Why are we doing this again?" Usagi asked.

"To make the magic circle."

"Okay," she said in a way that made it obvious she really didn't understand.

"You need something recently living to make the circle. Something recent enough to still have wisps of spirit to it. We need the circle to be on both the physical and the spiritual side. It is so we have a common area find each other to travel together in the spirit world."

"What do you mean? Won't we end up there together," Ami asked.

Filia shook her head. "No. The astral plane works by different rules. Sometimes when you are asleep, your spirit travels through the astral plane. Are dreams an organized place? The astral world is the same. But the methods of travel are different. If you will yourself enough to go somewhere, you will go there. That is why we must have a common area that exists on both sides. The magic circle I make from the recently living blossoms will exist on both sides."

Ami nodded.

Filia dusted off her hands of the ground blossoms. "Of course, your sleep has to be magically induced to make sure you are actually in the spiritual realm, and not your own mind." Filia frowned lightly. "Though when I did this to become a Fire Priestess, someone else who already found the dragon led me to him. I have no idea how we will find Eezoon."

"Well you said that since Lina can channel Eezoon's power, we could channel. Maybe she knows how to get to him."

Filia's frown turned into a smile. "Why yes, you are quite right. I should find her now."

Filia began walking through toward the two sparring in the distance. Ranma called a halt to their sparring, letting Lina catch her breath.

"Eezoon-sama, I think we can use Lina to find you on the spiritual plane."

"What? Why?"

"You know how he looks like on the other side, I imagine. That means you could probably get us there. I had someone who had been there before lead me. As of right now, you are the closest person to knowing how to get there."

"But I don't want to become a priestess. Do I look like a priestess type to you? I won't be worshiping anybody." Lina's brows furrowed with her last sentence.

"You don't have to become a priestess. You just have to lead us to where we need to go."

"Um…. I guess that's alright."

Filia began walking back and paused. "Although you might find some advantages to it. You could cast holy magic. You will probably be more powerful than me with it. You would truly be something to strike fear into demon lords." With that she continued walking away without looking back.

Lina frowned before her expression became thoughtful.

They all stood around a white colored circle with an 9 pointed star. Each point also had a circle around it.

"Remember," Filia began, "Don't forget this circle. When you fall asleep focus on coming to the circle. Imagine yourself there, and there you shall be."

Filia stepped into the middle of the circle. "I need you all to pick a corner and sit comfortably. You will fall asleep in whatever position you are in."

The girls all gathered into circle and sat on each point. Lina grumbled the whole time, while the senshi looked anxious to get their power back. Ranma sat on a rock outside watching them quietly.

Filia raised her hand and whispered. "Sleep."

Usagi found herself in a ice cream shop. No one was there. She thought there was something she should remember, but it could wait. There was so much ice cream. She ate and she ate. When she cleared out the counter she went around looking for the freezer. She found a metal door with an odd 9 point star on it. It tugged at her memory, but she'd worry about that later. She went inside squealed with the number of ice cream containers. She looked for a flavor she had never tried before. This place was as huge as a warehouse! Most of it was all flavors she had before, a hundred of each. A gray container caught her eye. It was a different color than the others. She went up to read the label, to see what flavor it was, but there was no lettering. She picked up the container and reached to open it when she saw a 9 pointed star inside a circle. Each point of the star had small circles around it.

She had flashes of battles, remembering screaming the first time she killed a troll, blood spilling all over her. She fell to her knees, trying to frantically wipe the blood off her school uniform that was dirty from days of days of traveling and sleeping in the dirt. She remembered a club jabbing her in the back painfully as she laid with the ground harshly on her face. She heard the other girls screaming for her to get up to move, but her eyes were locked with the troll's. She realized she was powerless. There was no moon crystal to call on, no transformation. She was human. Plain human. It had never really realized how normal people felt, confronted with demons and negaverse creatures until now. Utterly helpless. She suddenly found herself shielding her eyes a bright light consumed the creature. She looked up afterwards to find a smoldering creature and a red head holding her hand out to her, the other hand holding a sword dripping with foul green blood. And she remembered.

_I will no longer be helpless. I want the power to save my friends. I can't do that if I can't even protect myself. But to do that, I must find this place._

The world bent around Usagi.

Minako was giggling, finding herself in bishie heaven, gorgeous men of all skin tones and color surrounding her, serving her grapes, and fanning her. She had two, strong men massaging her feet and two practicing with swords fighting a couple of yards in front of her. As she finished the grapes she noticed a pattern on the bottom of the tray. It tugged at her memory. Memories of skeletons moving on their own, with rusty swords and armor. She blinked to find the men serving around her dead. She looked around but didn't see anyone that could have done it. They laid bleeding upon the floor, cut in several places; one of them even headless. She screamed, and huddled in the chair, searching frantically for what killed them. She knew it was still there, watching her.

Usagi stumbled around a little as she found herself in a field surrounded by trees, although everything was in black and white. She looked around. She saw Filia standing watching her intently, waiting for her to get her bearings, if that were possible in a world of thought and emotion. She blinked and then Filia was a dragon, about 5 times her size. She edged back.

"Calm down. It is me, Filia. I've forgotten you've never seen me fully dragon before. This is how I really look. My 'human' form is merely a incantation."

Usagi paused and looked her deep in the eyes. She walked closer while looking her in the eyes. She gave the dragon a sharp searching look before smiling and nodding. "Yep, eyes match the voice. Hi, Filia."

"Hello."

Usagi looked around. "Where are the others?"

"Probably still stuck in their own dream worlds. They probably haven't realized they have somewhere to be yet. You can go get them, now that you realize you are sleeping."

"How?"

"Just imagine where you want to go, and you'll go there. Will and Belief is all on the Astral plane."

Usagi nodded.

Hotaru fell down, drastically out of breath as she could no longer find the strength to run. She desperately crawled from the formless creatures chasing her in the distance. She crawled behind a tree and tried to calm her frantic heaving breathing. She heard the foot steps come closer as hunched over. Tears ran down her face as she cursed her weak body.

"Hotaru?" A friendly and concerned voice called. The voice filled with fear, "Hotaru!" Hotaru looked up to find Usagi standing over her. "Please help me… I can't run anymore…"

Usagi gripped her scepter tightly as she stared down toward the young senshi's stalkers, her lips making a tight line. Realization hit her as she looked down.

"Scepter?" She whispered in confusion. Filia's words echoed in her head _'Will and Belief is all on the Astral plane'._

Usagi spun around gracefully with her limbs extended, shortly pulling them in for a tighter and faster spin. She decided on an appropriate attack she made up this moment.

"Moon Nightmare Elimination!"

White spread out from her scepter filling the whole world with white, leaving them standing in a world of white.

Hotaru sniffled as she looked around in awe. She hugged the tall girl's legs. "Thank you Usagi.. Thank you so much…."

Usagi had a gentle smile as she patted the short girls had. "It's okay. Anything for a friend." The former Senshi of the Moon's smile became playful as she said, "You forgot what we came here to do already? Let's get the others."

Usagi and Hotaru stood roadside on a race track cheering on driver number 61, Haruka Tenou. After collecting her cheer and doing her interview for winning the world cup, she walked over to her friends, camera flashes following her. She smiled at Usagi.

"I didn't know you were into racing… I'm glad you're here."

Usagi shook her head with a sound of negative. "No, we're not, but we'd always come to support you."

Hotaru smiled a secretive smile. She spoke absently, "Aren't you forgetting something?"

Haruka looked at her questioningly. "Forgetting something, what do you mean?"

Hotaru looked at Usagi and shrugged.

Usagi's smile broke. "Uhmmm…" _How to make her remember…._"Lina Inverse."

Haruka looked at her funny. "You mean that anime series on TV?"

Usagi's eyes widened with confusion. That should have reminded her right away.

Hotaru just rolled her eyes. "Just come on, Haruka-papa." She took her surrogate parent's hand and started walking. "I'm not surprised its so hard to pull you from one of your greatest dreams."

"Dream?"

Hotaru merely shook her head.

Usagi followed and the world faded to shades of gray, and then to white.

Michiru was in her element as she played her solo, live on TV. Ever since the Japanese violin competition, she had been getting offers to join orchestra's and after this show there would be TV shows asking for her to be a guest. She loved music, and she was happy to share her love with the world. She noticed something move out of the corner of her eye on stage. It was her love, and daughter and…. the princess? She saw the princess motion for her to come. She wanted to shake her head, but she was in the middle of playing. If she didn't start focusing again soon, it would start affecting her play.

Hotaru jogged out onto stage and bowed to the crowd. She then turned to Michiru. "There is an emergency."

Michiru stopped playing and looked at her, whispering quietly. "Can't you guys handle it?"

Hotaru shook her head. "No, end of the world and all that. We need you Michiru-mama."

Michiru eyed her daughter. "You sound quite calm for an emergency."

Hotaru grabbed her hand. "Just come on."

Minako saw shadows flashing outside through the silk curtains of her mansion. She heard a blood curdling scream of something inhuman. She saw a figure reach for the window and open it. The curtains moved back to reveal…

"Usagi!"

Sailor Mercury sat amongst the remains of the Imperial Library. After searching the Moon, they found it deep underground, buried but in tact. The amount of knowledge storied in these archives was immense! She picked up another Holo-Book and read more on the scientific evaluations of magic.

_We have found after much study of magic that it has something to do with the astral realm. We know it exists, proving it through magic, but our mission is to scientifically prove its existence with our physical world. So far we can only observe its affects on the physical world._

She skimmed through their observations, but with no conclusive evaluations. She picked up another holo-book.

_We believe the astral plane is a dimension behind our reality. We believe it is a simpler realm, perhaps somewhat related with dimensional theory. There has been previous theory by a Stevon Hawkwing that in the formation of the universe only 3 dimensions folded out, and there were many microscopic, on the level of quartz. However, whether these smaller dimensions exist is still under question, but we believe the astral plane is the representation of one or possibly two of our three dimensions. In that sort of situation the plane would work differently than ours, or perhaps appear so. However, it is believed that the soul exists on the astral plane, so is it possible to 'define' a soul if we discover how to see and perhaps utilize the astral plane with technology._

The next book was on the first discoveries of the astral plane scientifically. She reached to pick it up when she heard an awe filled voice.

"Wow. This looks like Silver Millennium design," Minako remarked. "But I don't know what this stuff is on the shelves."

Michiru commented, "They are books. They are holographic."

Everyone nodded.

Ami stopped short of activating her book. "What are you guys doing here?"

"You've seemed to forgotten some things…."

Rei laid snuggled to her man's side, sighed with contentment. The room was in a grand palace, the highest building in Crystal Tokyo. The ceiling was high and had a mural of the senshi saving the earth on it. The fire place was large and imposing, made by the worlds greatest sculptors. The floor was of marble, with black and white swirls in its grain. The royal bed had a canopy of the sheerest silk of white and the supports and frame made of cherry wood that didn't seem so much cut into that design, but formed into it. The bed was covered with fluffy sheets with the base color red and with a swirling design of vines with the color of flame yellow. The sheets were made of silk that molded to the body.

Her eyes snapped open with an awed voice. "Wow!"

"Oh my…." Michiru muttered as her eyes came to rest on the bed. She turned sharply and stood directly in front of Hotaru, blocking her view. "Um… I think you're a little too young to see this."

Hotaru clucked her tongue. "Michiru-momma, I'm not a child!"

Usagi pushed her way through her gathered friends to get a view. They reluctantly moved out her way. The former princess's jaw dropped as she saw her good friend laying in bed with _her _man. The young princess's lips quickly became a straight line and her face lacked any sort of humor.

Rei sat up, holding the sheet to herself to ensure she stayed covered as she blushed. "W-What are you doing over there?" She stammered.

She saw Usagi's pop out from the crowd and the girls expression led her to believe she was far from amused. Rei looked at her lap, looking extremely guilty until she remembered. "I can explain…," she began before pausing. "Hey… Wait a second. What are you doing over there? You were just right…."

Rei lowered the sheets to find a blonde princess with her thumb in her mouth with her arm around her naked waist.

Everyone's eyes became wide and the awake and real senshi of the moon's ears turned red and she abruptly turned away sputtering. "R-Rei?"

Michiru covered her face with her hand exasperatedly, looking at the scene through her fingers. Hotaru glanced over her shoulder and covered her mouth with her hand at what she saw. Haruka quirked an eyebrow appreciatively at the Shinto priestess, while Minako gaped before muttering, "Figures with as much as they bicker…."

Ami finally gathered enough wits to get to the original point. "Um…. Put on some clothes and come with us. This is a dream and we need you elsewhere…." The former senshi of ice quickly shuffled out into the hall.

Memory flashed through Rei's head. "Oh. I remember now." She blushed some more. "Sorry." She gave a nervous chuckle.

****

Makoto was in a heavy battle on the beach; her friends had yet to arrive. It would be just her luck on her vacation that she'd run into something she couldn't handle. She gathered her last vestiges of power and sent it the demons direction. "Jupiter Oak Revolution!"

Lightning of a thousand storms pummeled the creature of darkness, but it stood calmly, absorbing the electricity like a lightning rod. The senshi of Jupiter gasped as she used the last of her strength and collapsed to her legs. The demon seemed to delight in her distress as it approached her leisurely. Makoto refused to give this monster the gratification of seeing her cry.

"Moon Nightmare Elimination!"

White light spread throughout far as the eye could see, filling the black haired girl's vision.

"Hi, Makoto," giggles from young girls went though the air, "Have any good dreams lately?"

Now that all the girls were gathered they found themselves at the magic circle they made while awake. The sorceress was already there.

"Lina? How did you get here without help?" Usagi asked.

The sorcery genius gave them a pointed look. "I _am _a sorceress. Of course I'd have an understanding of the astral plane although I normally don't travel around here voluntarily. Unlike you girls, I realize that there are dangerous things here, and prefer to stay within my own mind and domain. Normal people are lucky that there are such things as protective spirits. You girls probably won't even remember this trip."

Filia shook her head ruefully. "Never you mind that," she turned to Lina. "Why don't you lead them to Eezoon? "

Lina frowned. "Okay. This is gonna be awkward. Everyone hold hands."

The world wavered and they found themselves falling into water. The girls let go of each other's hands to swim to the surface. They all looked up to find a vibrant blue moon hanging over water as dark as a new moon. They heard Lina speak.

"This is very similar to the Lord of Nightmares, although she had a yellow lightning storm and a pure white sky, but the water was still this dark. It was much more chaotic and made less sense."

"Where do we go from here?" Ami asked. Everyone's head swiveled finding no land or something to hold on. Just infinite water. "I'm not sure…"

They all swam for what felt like hours before they began to tire. Filia flew through the air looking for land and circling back, her wing strokes getting weaker by the moment. They heard Lina gasp out sarcastically, "Figures we'd drown. It feels like that when you channel his power."

One by one they began dropping under the surface, the others would try to follow to save them only to get swallowed by the waters themselves. Their worlds went black.

Usagi saw a yellow light on the edge of her vision, she opened her eyes to take it in. There was a roaring campfire and there was a young Ranma going through kata. She looked around to see her friends rising as well. She stood and brushed the dirt off of her uniform and walked towards the campfire and gasped as her feet stepped in something wet. She looked down to see a puddle, hidden by shadow. The only indication of its existence was the moonlight reflecting off of its waters. She heard Lina swear behind her.

"Damn! It figures." The sorceress looked up at the sky to find that vibrant blue moon. "Nothing is ever how it seems in the realm of the spirit. It is all point of view and metaphor."

Usagi looked down at the puddle realizing it looked familiar. It was the same as the waters they almost drowned in, if they were several orders of size smaller. "Wow."

Hotaru didn't waste time looking around and went straight for the young boy. "Eezoon," she called hesitantly. The young boy paused on one foot with one knee held up in the middle of his kata. He turned his head. "Eezoon? I'm Ranma."

Hotaru's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. She turned a questioning look towards they approaching Filia, who was now in human form for convenience. She frowned with thought before speaking.

"These girls are looking for something. Could you help them?"

The boy dropped his upheld leg and turned to face them. "Big brother said you were coming. The boy turned a direction. "Follow me."

Filia paused behind the group. "I think it is no longer my place to follow. You continue on."

"But what do we do from here?" Motoko asked.

"Its different for everyone, and every god. I can help you no further."

Lina turned to face the dragon girl. "Yeah, I should probably leave as well. I'm not here to become a priestess. You continue on." Lina turned to follow Filia when a black panther strolled leisurely out the woods between her and Filia. Lina stopped short. "Um… Filia…."

Filia turned to see the big cat facing down Lina. It didn't appear to be hostile. Filia opened her mouth, before closing it to choose her words. Then she spoke, "It seems you are invited to stay."

Lina screamed, "But I don't wanna stay!" She stomped her foot and the panther gave a warning growl. Lina shirked back in fear before she realized she was a powerful sorceress. What did she have to fear? She leaned forward challengingly, looking into its eyes. They were the same vibrant blue as Eezoon's eyes. "Eezoon?" She asked questioningly. The cat shoved her towards the others with its head. Lina whined in protest. "But I don't wanna!"

The girls followed him to a clearing with a wooden board on the ground. He stopped and stared at it. The girls gathered around it, wondering why he only stood staring lifelessly. After an indeterminable amount of time he pointed. "In there."

Ami bent down to examine the wooden board. She tried to lift it, but she lacked the strength to do so. Makoto offered to help, "Let me get it." The dark haired girl got a good grip and lifted it, it came up about a foot before it fell into a hole they didn't notice before. They heard it land on the bottom with a wet thump. There was no light to see into the pit and they could make nothing out. Without warning the edges of the hole they stood around started sliding off like mud, taking them with it as they all let out squeals of surprise.

"Owie," Usagi rubbed her sore rear. She never understood why it was she always landed on when she fell.

She looked around trying to see something -_anything_- but to no avail. Until beady yellow circles began appearing all around her, she heard the other girls gasp. It didn't take her long to realize they were eyes. Cat eyes. The air filled with sounds of hissing and yowling from the cats. They didn't sound friendly. Before the girls could do anything, they found themselves assaulted by the cats, nothing but invisible claws and teeth. Usagi ran, like she imagined the others were doing, and ran into the damp wall of the pit. She huddled against it, trying to shield herself from the onslaught. Scratching. Biting. Hissing. Scratching. It did not stop. Only one thought went through her mind in a repeated loop.

_Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop._

And suddenly, as quickly as it began, it the pain stopped. Ami opened her eyes to find herself in a dojo. She examined herself to find no wounds from the previous onslaught. She shuddered in memory and couldn't find it in herself to move from her fetal position. That is when she noticed there were meaty thumping noises of flesh against flesh and flesh against wood behind her. She quickly peaked over her shoulder to see Eezoon, and female Eezoon sparring in a flurry of a likes she never saw in her life. She couldn't follow them so much as follow blurs and listen for impact. Before she realized it, she was sitting and watching quietly. They eventually stopped and she took the time to examine the details of the dojo. It was pretty old and had lots of patchwork down on it. The shrine had the old kanji for ice, not a deity, spirit, or concept on it like usual. Her henshin stick was sitting propped before it. She gasped and stood, walking towards it, paying no mind to the twins. She reached for it but was stopped by the dual voice.

"You wish for power. The power we have. The power we have shrived for and the power we have been given."

They stood on either side of her, and she felt cornered. She turned around to find the cat-like angel she saw from before hovering, gazing into her eyes. She found she couldn't look away as she felt its gaze strip her bare. She felt shame, before quickly suppressed it and met the stare. The angel smiled. "You are strong."

"But that pride is a hindrance to the power you seek. You must not fight it or force it; you mustn't fight me. My will is the will of the indomitable. You cannot own it, you cannot overcome it. The only path to share my power is to surrender to it. You must surrender your identity, and become me."

Goosebumps riddled her skin and with a start she realized she was naked. The angel brought a hand with soft fur on its backside and long nails that were almost claws to her chin and ran it over her cheek.

"Are you willing to surrender everything for me?" The musical voice of the angel whispered. Ami started to shake her head before she became aware she was shaking with the affection of that simple caress. She felt the extreme desire to swallow her being whole. It was she was like suffocating in molasses. She couldn't find the air to speak or breath. The angel repeated. "Are you willing to surrender everything for me. Mind, body," Ami shivered at thought of giving _that _- one of her valued possessions - to anyone, "and soul?"

Ami cried and nodded. She didn't understand why she was crying; whether it was in joy or sadness or fear.

She was dying.

She somehow was lowered onto the floor gently, supported incomprehensibly with the same hand that the angel held her cheek with. She didn't make a move of her own. She was just a doll to be controlled, to be played with, to be touched or thrown.

Hands caressed her whole body with love, affection, and over whelming desire. She couldn't tell whether it was just the six hands of the three she saw there, or many more. No part of her was left untouched and there was nothing she could do about it; would do about it. She saw male Eezoon hovering over her, and felt something pressing to get inside her. She did not protest and waited in simple anticipation.

Her world exploded in white, or was it sparkles? She burned to her core, becoming flame. Did she explode or implode? She felt like she was being consumed. Pain and pleasure mingled indescribably. She felt in the middle of her being, rather than saw, the form of her henshin stick. A clawed hand reached into her being and grasped it, changing it. She felt thoughts not of her own. Something about design and abilities, but she was too lost to care. She felt like she had no physical body; that it was just a shell that she was trapped in and now she was free.

Filia stood amongst in the center of the circle, keeping an eye on the girls until they awoke. She looked over at Ranma, who appeared to be daydreaming. After a time she sat down and meditated, waiting for them to awake. What seemed like hours later, in an explosion beams of color shot into the sky. Frosty blue, yellow, purest white, hot-coal red, electric-blue, earthy green, sea green, light violet, and pitch black all shot into the sky as far as the eye could see. She saw their figures float in the beams, ignoring gravity. As quickly as it started it stopped, and the girls landed gently on their feet. In eerie unison, they turned and looked as one at Ranma.

****  
Ranma met their gaze from his perch, and saw in that look an unspoken devotion. He realized he owned them; he could do whatever he pleased with them. They were his playthings; objects he owned. They knew it and found contentment in that fact. He felt nauseous with shame. He knew of their experience within him on the astral plane, but that was only representational, for the astral plane did not follow the rules or even form of the physical world. What you saw or felt there was only interpretation in relating it to the physical world. To him it felt more like they invaded his aura and spirit, and he swallowed them whole before ejecting them, part of him attaching to their soul like a spandex suit. It was like he held them all in a hand, and he could to whatever he pleased with them. They were his for as long as he would exist.

Filia watched Ranma's expression turn dark before he got up and walked into the woods. She turned to look at the girls who lowered their heads submissively, with content and secretive smiles on their face.

"Is it done?"

Ami snapped out of their eerie unison and daze first. "I-I think so."

Filia shook off the awkward feeling she had about the whole situation and decided to ask them to try out their new powers.

"Do you know what you can do, yet?"

Ami shook her head, unsure. "I feel… I feel something, but I'm not sure what would happen if I used it."

Lina lifted her sleeves. "Let's see what I can do now." She turned toward the rock Ranma was sitting on. In her mind she felt the water of midnight just under her feet, waiting for her to fall back and embrace it and bask in the vibrant moon's light. Now she didn't have to search for it, it was always there waiting like the embrace of a lover. She let herself fall in and felt power flood her. It was addictive. With a wave of her hand, her shadow shifted and streaked to consume the rock. When the shadow receded, the rock was gone without a trace. Her shadow flickered around her on the ground, and it seemed like shadows flickered across her body as if she was walking through a canopy of trees at noon. She became darker and darker, although she stood in an opening with nothing blocking the light until you could hardly see her. Filia began to get worried. "Lina!"

Lina blinked and stopped channeling power, coming out of the water in her mind, suddenly feeling cold and alone. She shivered. "I… almost drowned."

Filia blinked. Lina started pacing, thinking about what she felt. After a few minutes she stopped suddenly. "I guess its kind of like when I use the Lord of Nightmare's power in like how it is so much I can lose control of it. However this power is addictive and wants to absorb me, not explode and destroy everything in chaos."

Lina turned towards the other girls. "Be careful not to channel too much power. If you start feel like you're loosing yourself, cut it off."

Usagi quirked an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" Usagi fell into the power. A flash of white went over everyone like a shockwave, and the aches from their journey disappeared as it passed through them. Grass around Usagi seemed to grow before their eyes and a white mist seemed to bubble out of Usagi in her white ethereal glow. She gasped and everything disappeared.

"I see what you mean."

Rei let herself go to the power, feeling it wash over her like rapids. She gathered it in her hands and it made a ball of red hue with flames flickering it from it, making it look like a flaming red tear drop.

Each girl tried her powers, Ami's was ice, Minako's was air, Makoto's was electricity/lightning, Hotaru's was sound, Haruka's earth, and Michiru's was water. Usagi's was Light, and Lina's was Shadow.

Filia frowned. "Your power is 'holy' by definition… its source being a god, just as black magic is from mazoku… but each of your invocations are different. I wonder why?"

"That's because their spirit acts as a lens to direct my power. Their element and personality affects it."

Everyone jumped at Ranma's voice, they hadn't heard him approach, nor expected him. "Well, if that's the case," Lina began, "Can the girls still use your power for other elements?"

Ranma tilted his head in thought, accessing his spiritual and dimensional physics knowledge given. "I-I think so." This situation was not exactly accounted for.

Lina turned to Ami, seeing how she seemed to be the most adept for magical ability. "Try to make the ball of light I tried to teach you earlier, except feel Eezoon's power, not ambient energy."

"_Light which burns beyond crimson flame, let thy power gather in my hand! LIGHTING!_"

A ball of light formed in her hand. Slowly a blue hue crept over it. Ami blinked.

"Apparently you can… although it'll still have your tint on it." Ranma turned to walk away, "I'm going to go train."

Ranma started to walk away and paused. His eyes noticeably widened. "Incom-"

_BOOM!_

"-ing."

A Filia was on the ground under a demon wolf with its huge maw being held at bay with a large spiked club. The wolf foolishly picked her thinking she was an easy target, but Filia was a seasoned war veteran that ran with the best. Using her dragon strength she tossed it off of her. She became a glowing figure that reformed in the shape of a dragon in an instant. A furrow was carved into the ground as a beam of blue streaked towards the recovering beast. It reared its head and let loose a furious roar that dissipated the beam like so much dust. Filia immediately took flight and took shots at it as it ran dodged looking for another target.

Ranma started to move ever so slightly, and the girls felt their hackles rise as the moonlit waters in the edge of their consciousness became choppy and restless. Before Ranma could move Lina held up a hand and said, "Wait! I think we should try our new abilities."

Ranma started to object but Lina's look became pleading. Ranma realized that look was foreign to her face and felt shame again at what he had done to them. He crossed his arms. "Fine. But if things start to get hairy…."

Lina nodded absently as she accessed the scene. "Girls, lets attack and try out our new powers."

Makoto popped her knuckles and made a fist. "It'd be my pleasure." She charged at the beast, fist crackling with electricity. Makoto felt her body flood with power and she felt lighter, faster, and stronger.

She swung with a haymaker that the wolf dodged to the side with a quick shift of weight and a push with its paws. Makoto felt inspiration flow to her in the moonlit waters she embraced and spun with her momentum to smash the beast in its face. It roared as it got fried and flew back.

Ami stood in its path and didn't think she could move fast enough to avoid it. She raised her arm in a hard mid-range block, and Eezoon's power responded to her need without thought. A mist swirled and made a rough partial and jagged sphere shape that solidified into a wall of ice that made cracking sounds as it grew thicker. The mazoku slammed into the wall and landed shakily on its feet. As if it was an after thought, he roared, releasing a red beam that struck Makoto unawares. As the beam hit her, a blue light rippled over her body with the impact and she flew back and hit a tree with the same ripple effect.

The beast had barely steadied itself when it heard a rumbling. It looked around to see a short blonde haired girl with a cocky smirk with her feet planted in horse stance and her hands in front of her like they were gripping something heavy. She lifted the imaginary object and a huge block of stone that was held by a dim yellow hue came out of the ground and hovered above the blonde's head. She reared back like she was going to pitch a fast ball and the chunk of earth followed her motion as she pitched, spiraling towards the shadow wolf. It howled loudly, and it made everyone cringe with its volume. As if an invisible object hit the earthen ball, it broke into pieces that the demon let bounce of his hide harmlessly. It charged at the shocked blonde only to have a elegant looking girl with green hued hair land in front of him that held a green-blue ball of light between her hands. She looked as if she was trying her hardest to squeeze it into oblivion since the muscles in her arm tensed. The air became a swirling mist flowing into her hands as she brought them forward in a flourish. A geyser burst forth from her hands and sent the demon end over end.

Hotaru gave a swipe of her hand, and a sonic shockwave threw the monster toward Lina. The demon managed to get its feet under itself and tried to stop, digging its claws into the dirt as it skid towards Lina. It watched in fascination as the sorceress they all knew by name seemed to be standing in a deep shadow. She appeared to get larger as her shadow followed the grabbing action of her hands. Suddenly he couldn't move, being held by hands of shadow. Minako blew a kiss toward Ranma before blowing another kiss toward the creature….that manifested as a gust that was bigger than a "bom di wind" spell. The demon canine slammed, spine first, into a tree and gave a howl of pain.

When the demon woozily regained its senses it stared into sharp blue eyes that promised his demise. The blonde girl held her hand towards him and it was like looking down the barrel of a gun. Wispy, gentle , harmless light whisked through the air like innocent looking smoke from incense towards him. Where the wisps touched the demon, that place ceased to exist. The demon was quickly … annulled.

The girls let out a cheer as the demon dissipated into nothing. They turned to look for their lord, only not to find him anywhere.

On a branch at the tree line a figure watched impassively. His smile turned into a frown as the battle went on. His gripped tightened on his staff and he was just preparing to turn when a voice startled him.

"Who are you?" A steely accusing voice questioned.

The figure turned to face its confronter and actually opened an eye. "That's…. a secret!"

It pushed away from the tree in a jump only to get caught by his shirt as soon as his feet left the branch. Now the other eye was open.

"You think you are going to get away that easily?"

Suddenly the figures jovial expression turned unexpectedly ugly. It was a face that displayed true anger in a way no human could. "Do you think you can catch me that easily?"

His staff streaked at Ranma's head from the side opposite his free hand. It stopped centimeters from his head. The figure looked to see a redhead with wings held his staff still. "Do you think I'm so weak?"

The figure kicked Ranma's elbow, making him drop, and he viciously yanked his staff free. He landed on the ground below Ranma, seeing no concern on his enemies face, just calculated cold. It almost startled him to see such an expression on something other than a Mazoku. The figures face made a smile, but it was not the type that meant any good. He raised his staff and a thick beam of power flew towards Ranma.

Ranmas eyes widened in surprise as he was hit dead on. When the light cleared, he had lost track of his enemy. While Ranma didn't budge, it did feel like Ryoga hit him, and that surprised him. That guy was no ordinary guy. That shot would have seriously wounded the girls even with their new abilities.

Ranma jumped out of the tree and walked out of the trees towards the girls.

"How did we do, Eezoon-sama?" Minako said with a blush, her eyes on the ground.

Ranma beat back the shame, and smiled. "You girls did great."


	4. TRICK! Return of the Trickster Priest

A/N: I'm Ba-ck. Lol. Anywho, there is a lot of this that is already written. I've been going through and reread the whole thing and did a final tweak/revision. Sorry I've been holding out so long. There are only about 2,500 words left that I had already written for the slayers arc. The some of the return arc is already written, some 30,000 words. I wrote the beginning and after Slayers arc before the arc itself. I decided I shouldn't be jumping like that and removed the return arc a long time ago. Most of you probably haven't read it. I then wrote a decent chunk of the slayers arc and began posting it. I imagine it will take 10-15,000 words to flush out the slayers arc halfway decently. So here is chapter 4. Don't hold your breath for 5. Might end up on a release period like Materia-Blade with "Her War". I'm A.D.D like all hell and spend more time mulling on a story than writing it.

**Eezoon**

Chapter 4 – TRICK! The return of the Trickster Priest

Ranma and company made it Sairaag with a few more battles. They saved another town and the demons that showed up when evoking Eezoon's power were curiously weaker. Ami said the mazoku were probably saving their power. All the girls learned a lot of magic from Lina during their travels.

"So… where is this Syphiel you told us all about?" Usagi asked. She was a cleric that knew a lot of white magic Usagi was dying to use. While she could use normal magic attacks, she preferred her own type.

Lina put her hands on her hips and looked down at the town with a frown on her face. It seemed that some of the buildings were recently burned down, and the debris had yet to be cleared.

They began walking toward the part of town that had the least amount of damage. The people looked worn down and broken. She looked at a vender and saw few vegetables, highly over priced.

"Why don't we get something to eat first? I haven't had a well cooked meal in a while."

The other girls nodded in ascent. Lina picked the nearest restaurant, although it looked a like it wasn't kept too well recently. She walked in and she could feel the aura of depression. The waitresses only gave cursory smiles that didn't reach their eyes.

"Welcome. Let me seat you…"

As they all took their seats and the waitress passed out menus, Lina asked, "Do you know a Sylphiel? She's a cleric."

The girl actually gave a glimmer of a genuine smile. "She has been a godsend, but it hasn't been enough. Our fields are still getting burned by the Trolls and undead that appear and we have little food coming from our farms. Our animals are being killed, and we have to guard our farms. We've been losing people in the sporadic battles. I'm not sure this town will last much longer. I'm thinking about moving to Saillune. They've been fairing better with their magic."

Lina frowned. "Do you know where we could find her?"

The girl nodded. "She's staying in the inn at the center of town."

Lina and Filia's eyes boggled at the price for the food. "I don't think we can afford this….. It is a small fortune…."

Ranma tapped his chin thoughtfully, before holding his closed hand out over table. Lina put her hand under his to take what he was handing out. A glow shined out from his hand before he dropped a large ruby into Lina's hand. Her eyes shined with greed, before quickly suppressing it. He could always make more.

They ate in silence for a while until Ranma spoke. "I feel something wrong here. Something wrong with that great tree."

Lina nodded, "I should have expected you to notice something like that. See that huge crater on one side of town? The beast Zannifar is locked in that tree, as it absorbs its evil. He made that. The size of the tree is testimony to the demons strength. It has strength on par with a demon Lord, although nothing in the books tell its origin. I have fought it before with the gang. We had to reseal it after Copy Rezo freed it."

The gang walked into the inn and Lina walked up to the desk. Ranma picked a wall to lean against. "Could you tell us which room Sylphiel is in?"

The guy eyed them warily. "Who asks?" Apparently the war was breeding distrust. " Her old friend Lina. You remember the girl that sealed Zannifar a over a year ago?"

The guys eyes widened. "Oh, please forgive me, Lina-san. I'll go get her."

Lina looked took the time to look around the inn. It was the most well kept building in town, if her judgments are correct. But now that she thought about it, there were significantly less people in town than the last time, even after all those that died with the Copy Rezo incident.

"So you sealed it?" Ranma asked.

"Well, with the help of the mystic sword that was made to absorb his evil. Copy Rezo was trying to outdo the person he was cloned from - he was the great mage that found that part of Shabranigdo was sealed in his eyes - and summoned Zannifar into himself for power. He flipped out and tried to kill us. I think the evil corrupted his thought process a little, but he wasn't brought in to the world in the best way…"

Ranma nodded thoughtfully. "How would you unseal him now?"

Lina shook her head. "It should be impossible since with his rebirth, the underground temple that held the ceremony for his awakening was where the crater was."

"Lina!" Sylphiel ran to Lina and hugged her tight. "Thank god you here… its too much…. I can't do it by myself….." Lina quickly recovered from the unexpected hug and tears and ran her hands through the clerics hair while making shushing noises.

"Shhh, it's okay. I'm here now. What's wrong?"

After a few hiccups and sniffling, Sylphiel replied, "They attack the city everyday, trying to burn it down and take it over. Sometimes I couldn't save people… they died or were hauled off, crying for me to help them the whole time." She wept loudly when she finished.

Ranma watched on with eyes shining like cold steel. "We need to beat these guys, and soon."

Lina shook her head. "I wish it was that easy…."

The newly created priestesses shifted around uneasily. They had witness death on their way here at those few towns they past through that got attacked. Not to mention Krimzon. Death to them as Senshi was always a cold and bloodless death, but now death as so much more vile and bloody to them.

That night they gathered around a table in the clerics room and they had a map laid before them.

"Let me introduce you," Lina began, "This is Eezoon-sama, God and Goddess. He's somewhat of a generally powerful being, like Cephied, but from another world. Beyond the ones that we know of."

She waved her hands over the other assorted girls. "These are his priestesses, including myself." Sylphiel quirked an eyebrow at the thought of Lina being a 'priestess'.

"And this is Filia, a gold dragon and priestess of the Fire Dragon that still knows some of the 'holy magic' that was thought entirely lost in the War of the Resurrection of the Demon King a thousand years ago. Although, I still think some is lost, even after seeing her in action. Some of her magic is powerful enough to injure anything below a Mazoku general or Priest, and kill anything below a high brass demon."

Filia looked at her lap sadly. "When the elders died, what was left was lost."

Sylphiel took a close look at Ranma. "He's a god?" Ranma looked into her eyes and let her see into his being, she gasped and looked away. "Forgive me for questioning, Eezoon-sama."

Ranma liked the title at first, but he didn't think he was better than anyone else in principle, just ability. It started annoying him after a while, but only Lina would not use an honorific. That was the way she was.

"He is the God we summoned from a another world. A world even beyond the Sea of Chaos," Filia elaborated.

"Now that introductions are over, time for a battle plan," Lina began. She frowned, "I've never dealt with a straight out war, more like individual battles where we played hero's."

"Are there a lot of other magic users like you and Sylphiel?" Ami asked.

Lina swayed her head side to side weighing her numbers. "In this area of the world, which I hope is the only place this war is occurring, there is an extraordinary amount of magic. When we broke the god-sealing field the Mazoku put on this area of the world when we killed Hellmaster Phibrizzo, A Demon Lord of Shabranigdo, we were able to leave this continent. However, the people outside were lucky to be able to cast that lighting spell I taught you."

The girls eyes widened. "I thought this world was like a novel where magic was rampant."

Lina shook her head. "Most people off of this continent probably haven't even seen a troll. They might have seen a lower dragon that was more like a giant stupid lizard."

Ami scrunched her pert lips thoughtfully. "Sounds like they intentionally isolated you off. If magic was discovered or founded in this area, and it was sealed off in an early war between good and evil, that keeps your threat localized. After conquering this continent, it would be child's play to take over the rest of the world."

Lina and Sylphiel's eyes widened. "I-I never thought about that before," Lina said after a pause. "It's probably the fact that elves, dragons, mazoku and humans fought in the battle. Probably all the mages and sorcerers were involved, and became trapped here afterwards."

Ranma interrupted, "How bad are things here to handle? Do you think you need many more magic users to defend this town?"

Sylphiel shrugged, "The fact that I can keep them from completely obliterating the city shows that it would only take a few more… if they were as good as me."

Lina looked deeply at Sylphiel. "How could you fend them off? You weren't very good at offensive spells last time I seen you."

She shook her head ruefully. "I've gotten much better. Let's just say I've gotten a lot of practice," She finished with a grim expression.

"I think we'll leave a girl or two with you to help defend."

"Really? How good are they?"

Lina answered, "We use 'holy magic' like hers too, but ours is different. His power is a part of us and we can evoke it without out a thought, just intention. Filia only has access to cast spells that use the Fire Dragon as a source. "

"We need to travel to Saillune and Dragons Peak to gather people," Filia said. "What's going on with your sister Lina?"

Lina's face lost all color at the mention of her sister. "I, uh… she's guarding our hometown… believe me the town in safe hands."

Rei looked at Filia questioningly. "What's up with her sister?"

"She's a knight of Cephied, rumored to be the most powerful sorceress on the planet. However, last time she dumped off world saving onto Lina."

"Knight?" Ranma was curious.

"Like the Mazoku Lords have a priest and a general, Dragons have a Knight and priests or priestesses. Or at least that is what we derived. Supposedly in the Flare Dragon's death, he left his soul in his Knight. He formed the remnants of his astral body into 4 Dragon Kings. A Dragon God or King and his Knight are soul bonded." Filia took a moment to let the sink in as she flicked her hair back over her shoulder. "As a result it seems she has an even higher magic capacity than Lina here. And Lina's is one of the largest human ones I have ever seen. However that is not her strength, it is her ability to channel ridiculous amounts of black magic from mazoku. Normal magic she is pretty strong at, but she is average at astral spiritual magic."

Filia looked Lina directly in the eye. "Actually every time you've done that you're capacity has been stretched to greater levels." Filia shook her head, "Considering you have the ability to channel from the source of Creation."

Ranma voice cut through the air, "Lina's capacity is very massive. Usagi's is the only one whose is greater, but it is like she descended from some god or something. She has traces of…" Ranma paused to find the right words, "something bigger. She has a little extra than the normal human soul. Just like you dragons obviously," Ranma looked right at Filia. Filia could _feel_ him looking through her and into her. "Have it somewhat stronger."

Late in the night a man was feeling around the tree and looking up to its branches. He came to stop at a large sword that was implanted in the tree.

"This is it…. With this I can…"

"Do nothing." Ranma finished. "What were you trying to do before I arrived?"

The figure raised his index finger and looked at him mischievously around it. "That's… a secret." This person's infuriating manner pissed him off.

The figure turned with his index finger leading and a concentrated beam of yellow light came from him and sliced the tree almost easily.

He dropped his hand to his side as he cocked his head sideways to observe his work. "That should to it."

Ranma took a step forward and the figure reached for the sword. "Ah, ah, ah! You wouldn't want to be cut now, would you?"

Ranma took another step anyway and the sword was ripped out of the tree quickly and raked his chest. Ranma jumped back quickly. He was used to being immune to physical attacks, but that definitely felt like it raked across his soul and dragged a piece with it. It really fuckin' hurt.

Usagi's eyes opened, and lacked any sort of drowsiness. In her sleep she felt the waters just out of her reach become choppy. She lifted to her feet like they were on a lever. A white pulse was projected from her as she flooded with power. With a thought she was clothed in Eezoon's type of chinese clothes, but they were solid white. She jumped through the roof and sped towards where she knew Eezoon was. As she ran she realized the others where following her as well as they speed toward the great tree.

The tree began falling towards the city while Ranma stood it off with the Mazoku. They stood warily facing each other. Ranma slowly reached up to his ear and took pulled his earring. It morphed into a long staff. It was a simple staff; long and slender silver, topped with ring with a 3-D yin-yang ball hovering around inside of a simple oval ring. He brought it to bear.

"Haaaa!" He swiped at the figure and he met it with the sword. It absorbed the super powered swing without budging the man. Ranma began blurring at the figure and he met or dodged every attack. This was no ordinary enemy. Their fight was intercepted at a loud groaning noise as it began falling…towards the town. With a flurry of feathers Ranma's angel burst forth and sped toward the tree hands first, leaving a blue-white trail. Its hands impacted the tree and a blue ring pulsed forth from the point of impact with the force. The tree was pushed back away from the city and landed with a thunderous crash. It was that moment that all the girls landed in a circle around the figure.

"Xellos!"

"Bing-Bong! Correct."

Lina menacingly stalked toward him, while rolling up her sleeves. Her tirade had started in a loud voice and ended in with a growl of his name, "What are you up to now, Xellos?" He hands were suddenly wrapped around his throat and he gasped. His head lulled back and forth as she shook him violently.

"That's a secret!" He gurgled out.

Ranma blinked as the menacing character suddenly became non-threatening. A gust almost bowled them over and they turned to find a filthy gray geyser spurting from the tree stump. Lina's grip slackened as she watched what happened. It formed into a 7 headed dragon before coalescing into a man shaped figure.

A tall figure covered with a red cape and purple should guards and hued hair.

"What is this?" A loud draconic voice rumbled. "This is the form of that fool human that tried to contain my power." He cocked his head to the side. "Although I must commend him for being able to control me for as long as he did…. Eventually I would have taken over his body as I eroded his soul." The statement was followed with sharp and cruel laughter.

Xellos turned toward the Rezo shaped Zanefar. "I have a proposition that you can't refuse?"

The purpled haired man with a 7 headed dragon shadow quirked an eyebrow. "Can't refuse? Who are you to tell me what I can and can't do, Ruby-eye spawn?"

"Due to circumstances, we have a new opening. Perhaps you would like to become a new Lord? How does Zanifar the Chaos Dragon sound?"

An awkward silence followed the proposition before a sharp bark of mocking laughter was the response.

"Serve that fat mutated beast? You have to be kidding!"

Suddenly Xellos's expression turned dark. "Do you know what this sword is truly is?" Every saw a glimpse of fear cross the beings face. "The humans think it absorbs evil essence. In truth it absorbs anything spiritual. This sword contains a whole pocket dimension. It is rumored it is a staff, much like the one we exist on, that protrudes from the sea of chaos. Being such, it is a world of itself. Perhaps it was a budding world that was ripped from Lord of Nightmares before it developed. That would mean it is an empty world. Nothing exists in it. No death, life, planets, or stars. It is a 'small' world but small is relative. For a reality is infinite to our minds. It's blade is a path to get inside that world. As you can imagine… it is the perfect prison."

With a flicker Xellos was behind the being and with an expression of absolute shock the being was stabbed by the sword. With a scream, Zanifar was gone. Xellos gave a little salute and turned. As he prepared to 'jump' into the astral plane, two slender arms wrapped around him. He looked over his shoulder at the owners face to see the beautiful angel from before…yet it looked much more demonic and deadly. It's canines were no longer cute, but now full fledged fangs. The eyes held the pure malevolence of an angry large feline. The hands no longer had beautifully long manicured nails, but were long and black like claws. In the moment to process this, his chest was raked by those very same nails and a pitch black miasma spewed from his chest. He pushed away and opened both of his eyes. He had apparently underestimated his enemy greatly. A look of unease passed his face as he brought the sword up to bear. He stood facing the god with his priestesses on either side of him in a semi-circle. A staff formed in the gods hands.

"Divine lightning!" A 6 inch thick bolt of electric death rocketed towards the mazoku and he deflected with his sword. He dared not to try with his staff, seeing how that was actually a part of him. The attack had distracted him as he no longer saw the girls near the god and he got hit in the side by a weird blue blast of divine origins. He flew off the huge tree trunk and into a branch of the fallen tree. He looked the direction it came from to see a blonde girl with her hands smoking.

"Shit!" Xellos swore. He hadn't been in this situation since Gaav somehow wounded him on the astral plane. That showed the difference in power considering that he wasn't even familiar with it anymore since then.

Suddenly it became unusually dark. All the stars and the moon were gone from the sky. One couldn't make out anything but dark shapes. Ranma's stance became firmer as he hesitantly called. "Girls… come closer to me."

Suddenly a glowing started like a ripple on water in the air before Xellos. The ripple expanded and formed a tall figure, pushing six and a half feet. For some inexplicable reason the figure was entirely visible, despite that nothing else was. Long purple hair with cut so that when hanging it could make a line; there was no taper. She was slender, almost freakishly so, giving the impression of a spider. The face was very angular with a sharp nose and thin lips. Her eyes were like a wolf's. A tight black vinyl corset covered her midsection holding and emphasizing a decent 'D' cup worth of breasts. She wore casual yet expensive looking black slacks with simple red slippers. Her arms had silver braces cast with an elegant artwork of various vicious beasts. Xellos's eyes actually widened for the first time Lina had ever seen; at most they usually open.

"Hello, young God. I am known as Xellas Metallium, the Beast Master. Who are you?" She asked in a calm and alluring voice that belied its disarming tones. It made everyone's hair stand on end and awakened the instinct to fight or flight. It made its listeners want to attack in blind fury at the false voice.

"I am Eezoon, Deus of Balance."

The woman raised an eyebrow. She clucked her tongue, "Tsk. I see my servant misjudged you as a potential obstacle." She looked at him sharply, as if reading him and she continued the gaze to sweep over the gathered girls. "I see. I'm sorry, but I cannot allow you to interfere right now. I am truly sorry." Something intangible screamed blasphemy at the false politeness of this person. She was a mockery of good and kind, although her sultry tones and manner created a believable parody of such.

"Xellos. Go." It came out like a polite suggestion, but to everyone it sounded like it was not a suggestion. It was a command to be followed under penalty of things worst than death.

Xellos unsteadily got to his feet and 'jumped' away into the astral plane. Ranma's angel made a move, but a voice cut through the air and froze everyone in an unspeakable fear. "Ah, Ah, Ah," was accompanied by a wagging finger, "I didn't say you could follow him."

Ranma frowned and shook of the psychic attack, his power on the mortal coil was sharply increased and a shockwave of wind pulsed outward from him, kicking up dust. The girls felt the waters on the edge of their consciousness become more than restless; it became stormy. They grasped on to the power and it flushed through them in a torrent. Their glow cut through the darkness. The demon lord raised an eyebrow. "Oh, that is quite the aura you girls can manage. Though I have never seen such a bond since the days of Cepheid. His knights were quite the power. They managed to take out some generals and priests of Demon lords at the time." She looked up at the sky and then directly back at Ranma. "I think it is time for me to leave."

Blasts of varying type crashed around the woman, the explosions blocking all view of her. Ranma heard a whisper in his ear and a hand was on his chin almost in a teasingly affectionate manner. Another hand had a nail poised to his throat like a knife. "Do you know why they call me beast master?" She was somewhat intrigued by his lack of shock. She felt a something poking her in her stomach. She looked down to see his staff in her midsection. "Oh," was her curious response. _Apparently this one is a warrior._ That was as far as she got before light blasted forth from the end of the staff, blinding everything. A shadow vaulted through the air in an amazing feat of acrobatics to land in the middle of the spread out group. The light cleared showing a smoking demon lord, that had an infuriating grin of amusement. "They call me beast master because I can control all the creatures that crawl on the ground, swim in the seas and fly in the air." A humming sound approached the tree and its source was made out in the light of the glowing girls. Crows swooped in and began pecking furiously. Ranma's sight of the girls was blocked by the thick gathering of birds. The blood curdling screams of the girls went through the air. Ranma's expression turned into the one he only used once before - killing Saffron. The demon lord faded away amidst the chaos , her grin lingering like the Cheshire cat.

The birds that tried to peck at Ranma got fried like flies in a fly in a bug zapper as bolts of power stuck any that came close. With an angry roar, a ball of light and electricity exploded out from Ranma, killing all of the scavengers in its path. When it was done they all laid on the tree stump like a black smoldering carpet. The shrieks still didn't stop as the bloodied girls writhed amongst the dead crows. Ranma's fangs appeared to grow more feral as he growled in angry remembrance of his own experience with cats. With a thought the death turned in to dust and blew away leaving only Ranma and the girls. His righteous anger made his soul thrash and it showed as it washed over the girls. He expression softened and the angry glow around the girls did as well. Skin and muscle mended and eyes reformed in the light. The girls calmed in the glow and just fell to tears.


	5. Interlude 1: A Brief History

**Eezoon  
**Interlude 1: A Brief History

* * *

**FILE:BRIEF-HISTORY. DOC**

**AUTHOR: ODIN ONE-EYE**

**CLEARANCE : KAMI-SAMA'S EYES ONLY**

* * *

The weakness of science is that a theory must be able to prove an effect. Throughout most of human history, how the higher planes work, or even proof of their existence is hard to prove or show exist. As far as humanity is concerned, the physical world is all there is since that is all we were capable of observing. Once humanity discovered there were many dimensions, and possibly more than there could be observed, there were theories that perhaps what we see is only a cross-section of what really exists, and the rules of all physical existence is the result of the culmination of other dimensions.

Humanity discovered what they thought was the "spirit" on a plane consisting of 3 dimensions they dubbed the "astral" plane. This was due to the fact that the emotions of people nearby affected the environment. It took powerful quantum supercomputers to detect the subtle differences in quantum results, but it was there. The "spirit" was originally recognizable as electromagnetic background noise that "ghost hunters" used to predict the presence of a spirit back in the century that created the atomic bomb.

Over time our observation of the "astral" plane became more precise, yet no hard physics for the realm were able to be composed. Conservative Scientists who believed everything had concrete laws to operation believed that it was beyond human mathematics and understanding.

It was in this era that magic had a resurgence, backed by the science of the time. Amazing wonders were possible in this era mixing spiritual knowledge with scientific theory.

Quantum manipulation had advanced to not yet all encompassing, but mankind believed they were close. Every known element and molecular design was now possible with technology, and a stable form of fusion was now in use all the way down to the masses. This caused an age of enlightenment of humanity, where all of mankind were seeking understanding themselves and their place in the universe, now that basic survival was no longer a worry. Greed was low because almost everything a person would want was available at their finger tips. Computers ran everything, leaving most people trying to figure out what to do with their life. Crime was almost non-existent since there was no point in stealing. The only crime left was murder, and it was usually was emotionally motivated.

There was no longer any aging now that cells and organs could be replaced with new ones. The human brain has a limit, however, and all but the most major events faded from memory after the first thousand years. Ironically, the human brain was still not understood. Humans still could die if from accidents. Some humans died randomly. We never understood why human brains would spontaneously stop working. The unlucky ones went through insanity first before the fail. They caused much destruction and chaos when they did with the amount of technology and power available at the time. We would have to "neutralize" them. This was just a fancy term for murder.

I gathered the greatest scientists of all time together to try and piece the veil to possibly even higher dimensions. Some of the publicly known greats such as :Hild Ma'oh, Freya Lance, Loki Wild, Mimir Wisdom. There also were other less-known scientists that were just as good.

We projected the next 2 dimensions above the astal ones we've dubbed the "akashic" plane. This projection was based partly in science and partly on spiritual beliefs of ages past. To make an observable change in these dimensions we discovered it took the energy of a huge star or a black hole. Of course we did not create stars and black holes, but spent an eon seeking one out by predicting based on what we could see from the Earth system, and calculating the time it would take to get there. Mankind has never overcome the relativistic limit of the speed of light. We suspect there are no speed limits on the astral side, and that it, unlike this realm, does not have relative-time but perhaps general time.

We figured there had to be a way to probe the astral plane more directly. Once we probed the astral plane we can then possibly probe the akashic plane. Thus, was the creation of the "dimension transfer singularity". We had no idea what we had created.

Luckily, we performed the experiment in a far off system. The singularity instantly wiped out the whole system. We were watching from a distance. The location of this singularity was roughtly 1000 light years away from Earth. We had watched from 3 light years away from the experiment. The singularity was 1 light year big. We figured we destabilized the astral plane in that area, causing a breakdown of the laws of physics that govern the physical plane we live on.

Over time we sent probes in, and adjusted them to gather what data we could. All we could do is gather data from the edge of the phenomena.

Eventually we became frustrated and decided to send someone in. We were were pretty sure that anyone who entered would not be able to return to the physical world, but perhaps like a spirit, could communicate with us on the physical world. Loki volunteered. We wished him luck and offered him prayer that his spirit lived on, even if his body did not. Loki did somehow reform a body and return, but he was not quite sane.

When we were exhausted all other methods, we began building an a "dimension transfer singularity" keyed to the Akashic realm. We already lived long enough, and if we died, so be it. We believe we vaporized the whole galaxy that time, though we will probably never know. We and any sentient beings closest to the phenomena, found ourselves in what appeared to be a void that contained a single star.

We discovered odd entities in this world, which we now figured was the astral realm. Somehow our calculations must have been off, which explained the violent response of the experiment.

The beings there taught us the ways the astral world. They were beings who glowed with a shine that none of our astral bodies could compare. Over time some of them would become "enlightened" or achieved "nirvana". They believed they moved on to a higher existence. Every time one did, the world shook, although it is hard to describe what it did, seeing how this plane is non-physical.

This plane functioned entirely on will, thought and emotion. Us more sentient beings were capable of thought, but there were other entities of varying levels.

This world was malleable with thought so we used our minds to probe the star. We discovered this was the representation of a physical world in it's infancy. We continued on our experiments to pierce the Akashic plane. It was more like meditation than anything. We found our minds worked differently here and could handle more information than we could as a physical human.

We also discovered what we believed was the source of magic discribed in ancient history. There were beings of differing elements that represented different rudimentary concepts of the physical world. Manipulating these beings caused immediate effects in the physical world.

Using our original dimensional theory, the physical world was a culmination of everything above it. If you manipulated the physical world drastically enough, you affected the higher worlds. If you manipulated the higher dimensions subtly, you affected the physical world greatly. We were not powerful enough to manipulate drastic changes to the physical plane instantly from the astral side, and so we did little changes over eons. We moved it into a pattern that began affecting this astral plane of energy and thought. Our changes became subtler and subtler until we believed we became thought we pinpointed the dynamics of a higher plane, the one we had dubbed the Akashic plane. We studied the effects over what seemed to be an infinite time, if there was such a thing as time here.

We built ourselves forms to return to the physical world. We did not block off recognition of our astral side as what we supposed happened to the Astral Beings of our original world, for reasons unknown.

Through our experiments for the Akashic plane, we projected a higher realm which we called the Realm of Creation, the Realm of God, Ain Soph. It seemed we could only fathom and project one dimension for this "plane". If there were higher dimensions, there was too whopping a phase difference to any higher dimensions to calculate if they existed. We were incapable of discovering anything higher.

This time, we figured we might as well well venture a trip to the Akashic plane as to probe Ain Soph. So we rebuilt the "dimensional transfer singularity" in the fledgling physical world. This one was keyed more precisely than the last. We figured if we journeyed to the Akashic Plane from there we could experiment there to study Ain Soph.

When we probed the astral analogue of the "dimensional transfer singularity" with our astral selves, knowledge beyond measure was accessible. It was the knowledge of worlds come and go, beings come and go, the beings that we've met, ones we haven't. We never fully believed the beings when they told us "all was one" until now. We now believe we had a rough understanding of the universe.

This universe and many like it, emanate from the great Endless or Infinite. Our attempt to fully understand Ain Soph plane is impossible. We can only see a glimpse of it and therefore could never fully understand it, or access anything higher.

Our conclusions were:

_Physical - 3 Spacial, 1 Time_

_Astral - Thought, Emotion, Spirit_

_Akashic - Wisdom, Knowledge_

_Ain Soph - Unknown_

_Ain Soph (1D)-Akashic(2D)-Astral(3D)-Physical(4D)_

_*'D' is for the number of dimensions Comprising the Plane._

_This concludes that there are 10 known dimensions._

We connected ourselves with Akashic bodies through the "dimensional transfer singularity". We used our newly acquired knowledge from them to attempt to manipulate the qualities of Ain Soph.

We found it impossible without direct influence and created one more "dimensional transfer singularity" which took the majority of the energy and matter of the fledgling universe. We then used our Akashic bodies to probe the singularity on its Akashic analogue.

Thus, Yggdrasil was created. It was our small interface into the great Infinite of Ain Soph. The higher the dimension manipulated, the greater the effect on lower dimensions as the change cascades downward through the planes. Yggdrasil does have a "computer" aspect to it that we built in the physical and astral planes. Yet we do not have a full understanding _why_ it works.

We left enough matter and energy to last for a few trillion years for worlds for us to live on. and we built an ideal society in this universe were no one died and we lived into eternity. We had children and gifted them with akashic bodies as well. Each one was an embodiment of an aspect of creation, due to their Akashic bodies. This world went on without much change or creation. It was an existence of peaceful boredom. We were a sad people. Many of us sat around staring into oblivion for eons, unmoving.

Through Ydgrassil we discovered other universes. We could travel between them through Ain Soph, which connected them all. We attempted to guide sentient societies to never-ending peace and enlightenment.

It was then Hild revolted and stated her motivation was to prevent for another society to end up like their existence of nothingness. She did not want us to condemn other societies to our timeless emptiness.

She believed there had to be strife for there to by joy. There had to be darkness, for there to be had to be a hammer to forge the sword. There had to be loss to appreciate gain. We had took change away. There had to be change and change in and of itself was not evil. It just was. Death was not evil; it gave sentient spirits another chance to do something different; go a different place.

We warred over the concept until the I terminated the connection of the rebelled gods to Yggdrasil. We banished them to a budding Universe that had almost nothing in it, and never had any sentient life. We called this realm Hell.

The rebels built a synonym of Yggdrasil called Nídhogg and gathered and created more Fallen Gods from other universes we had not yet reached. They then broke into our original universe, which we had named Asgard.

We almost completely annihilated each other. I reasoned with them, telling them if that if we all perished, there would be nothing left to mark our existence or accomplishments. If we destroyed each other they could no longer prevent the same thing events from occurring in another universe. Together, we forcefully implemented the Doublet System.

Now there is little direct warfare between the two sides. But as we, the Gods of Light attempt to guide humanity and other beings in various worlds in our footsteps and towards enlightenment, they are there at every attempt to thwart us.

I, along with the surviving scientists who form the Elder Gods and Elder Demons, are the only ones who know this history. We are also the only ones who have come to understand what Hild was getting at. Our progeny does not understand the lessons that Hild taught and never will until they go through the eons of nothingness the Elders did.

The Gods believe we created the universe and that the demons are jealous and wish to destroy our creation.

The Demons believe their sole purpose is destruction, returning this "flawed" creation to nothingness. They revel in the pain and destruction they cause as proof of creation's fallacy.

The Elders of the Demons and the Gods know better. Their beliefs are flawed, but serve our purpose. We Gods prevent the Demons from going out of hand. The Demons keep the Gods from creating the "paradise" of peaceful nothing. Together we maintain the balance.

I am Odin, the Elder God with the strongest connection to Yggdrasil and Ruler of the Gods of Light. This is my story.

-Odin One-Eye -Date: 1E ADS *

* * *

*1 **E**on **A**fter implementing **D**oublet **S**ystem

Authors Notes

I wrote this with the intention of describing some of how the reality of this series works along with the origin of the Gods. Ranma is connected to both Nidhogg and Ygdrassil for a purpose that will be clarified later. I also wanted to give an insight into the unique mindset of the Gods and Demons. I pulled the Gods' mindset from Buddhism, where spirits who built up enough Karma go to the realm of the Deva. The Deva are quite powerful and long lived. Some of them are said to have existed before this universe and some somehow believe they created it.

*An Angel in this fic is what makes a goddess a goddess. It is Akashic body connected to Yggdrasil. The Angel is connected to the Astral body of the Goddess. The physical manifestation of an Angel representative of the user's _new_ astral form. However this form is due to the connection with the Akashic body, which is an embodiment of an essence or principle of the universe.

*The effects of mixing two of the Trinity of the Unknowable from the Kabballah is unknown at this time, and has never been done. Odin only knows of the existence of the Trinity because of LoN showing herself to him in the past.

*Note that Lord of Nightmares is the Ain Soph of her realities. She is one of the Trinity in the Kabballah. Ain Soph(Endless), Ain (Nothingness), Ain Soph Aur (Endless Light). You can guess which one I picked as Lord of Nightmares.


	6. TRIP! Visiting Seyruun

Note: There may be some page breaks missing and italics that lack spaces due to document format exchanging.

**Eezoon**  
_Chapter__ 5-__TRI__P__! __Visiting__ Seyruun_

Sylphiel awoke to the sound of the door of the inn opening. She awoke and wandered down. There weren't many people who came to this town since the attacks began, so she was the only one in the inn most nights. It was odd to hear any noise at night in the town except for the marching of the newly formed volunteer sentries.

She came to the bottom of the stairs to make out the Eezoon with a sad face and the girls holding each other and crying behind him. Lina was the only one not out in tears, but her stoic silence and slumped demeanor showed how taxing it was on her mental strength. She stood silently beside Eezoon.

"Wha-What happened?" The cleric asked.

Ranma put a hand on Lina's shoulder. "We'll talk about it in the morning."

That night the senshi cried themselves to sleep around their God.

"So one or two of you need to stay here and help her. I can come back and get you - teleport if necessary - if you need me, but Sylphiel won't last too much longer like this. I was thinking about leaving Lina behind, since you know each other and she is the most powerful of the bunch. She has prior experience to dealing with these Mazoku even before she became my priestess. It's more like an added ability and power boost to her than anything. You shouldn't have any problems short of someone like that Xellos character."

Lina nodded reluctantly. "That's true… but I want to go on with you…," her expression hardened with her tone, "I want to get to the bottom of this."

Ranma shook his head. "We need to get help before we can even get to the bottom of this. This is a battle - not a war. We need soldiers. We are strong, but we are not enough. If things end up the way I think it will… I am the one to go toe to toe with the big guys. I need people to take care of the rest."

"But…"

[Don't worry. I can fill you in like this anytime.]

"How?" Lina asked.

[Telepathically, dummy.]

Lina blinked. "Wha-what? Since when could you do that?"

The group watched on as Lina looked crazy responding to what appeared to be nothing. They figured something must be going on because she was looking straight at Ranma.

Ranma caught on to the looks and responded out loud, "Probably from the moment you became priestesses. I could probably force my way into anyone's head, but its easier with you." Ranma fidgeted uncomfortably. "I can see and hear everything you do and think about you as if I'm you. It was something that is tingling in the back of my mind, and if I think about it I can see exactly what you are doing and thinking at the moment. I can even remember what you did even if I wasn't paying attention. I think that even when I'm not directly paying attention, I'm still storing it away in my head like it was my memory. It was confusing at first to separate your memories from mine at first. I block it out most of the time though, but it is always there. I try not to because I think it is, like, violating your privacy or something. It's like watching someone shower though a peephole but worse. I probably should have told you before."

Lina looked at him as did the other girls and they all shifted around someone uncomfortably. Filia, who was sitting at the table and observing quietly responded.

"I imagine that your awareness and mind is somewhat different from a normal person. But I also think that probably the Fire Dragon has the same thing over me. However, I've never met him except on my ascension. So I guess it is a bit different. So it isn't in my face everyday. I probably should have told you this… but this type of bond is quite powerful. He owns your soul for as long as you are alive and probably after."

"What happens to priestesses when they die?" Minako asked hesitantly, undecided if she liked this or not.

"Well, you remember the astral plane from your ascension right? Remember you traveled in Eezoon's mind and soul? You'd probably travel around there. You are as apart of him as much as his own thoughts. Gods are on a whole different level than mortals. What is merely our imaginations as mortals are practically, if not actually, a real existence to high beings. Just as we of the world are formed from the Sea of Chaos, which is a higher being itself. You could say existence is merely its dream. Our souls as priestesses could probably travel there whenever we wanted, if it wasn't for the fact that we are innately material and physical. It is just like the fact that everyone has the ability to see beyond the physical because they are both a physical and a spiritual being; however we favor the logical material world and shut out our spiritual sides."

Lina blinked. That was an interesting bit of information. One could say being somewhat of a historian is a requirement of being a sorceress. She had suspicions of that before but wasn't sure.

Ranma bowed his head. "I'm sorry. I never would have done if I known that. Its like I own you."

Filia cut through his self-admonishment quickly. "You don't understand Eezoon-sama. Most people don't! You are looking at it like forced slavery! That is not what it is at all. What if someone took away all your worries? You never had to worry about starving or not having a place to sleep or someone to love and love you? Bonding with a God is practically like giving all your worries and pain on them. If anything it is a burden on the god and a relief to the priestesses and followers."

Filia turned to the girls. "You no longer have to worry about or ponder about what happens to you when you die. Death is no longer a fear. If Eezoon-sama so wished, he could bring you back from death as long as he exists. Your god loves you as much as, or perhaps more than himself. You are as part of him as a person's arm or leg. Your everything is naked before him, as he knows your every fault, and he still loves you unconditionally more than even a parent could. You no longer have to think or worry, because you will always be fine because your god loves you and takes care of you! Even if this whole world perishes, as long as Eezoon-sama exists, you will as well.

"You could live carefree in afterlife. Technically, your god alone judges you. Others worry and don't have anything nearly as concrete in their lives as you girls now do. Be thankful that you don't need to wander eternity by yourself. Most souls wander eternity looking for enlightenment to ascend and become a higher being - a trial that you might not make it through. You could become corrupted beyond redemption, falling into a hole of never ending despair. Contrary to popular belief, a soul is not indestructible in the way that you exist as you are now for all eternity. It can be," Filia paused looked for the right word, "-dissipated. Just as if a rock can be turned to dust. You still exist… but…"

The girls shuddered.

"Now you don't have that worry. You no longer have to struggle and temper your spirit for eternity."

Ranma's eyes steadily widened as she gave her speech, he did not think he would like it himself, but for someone else it sounded like a dream. However, Ranma was one who liked to prove himself. If he hadn't become a god like this, he would have eventually succeeded anyway. He believed in strength. But now that she mentioned it he thought about how he felt about them, openly basked in the glow of their soul and realized he found each one of them beautiful in a way beyond measure. He realized that the priestess was right.

He turned to look them in the eyes and they all became glassy as they met his. An understanding passed between them and Ranma let go of his insecurities and objection as both sides finally reached acceptance and contentment with the situation.

"I'm sorry." Ranma bowed his head. The girls eyes widened and mouths began to open to object when as Ranma continued unhindered, "I wish I would have realized sooner. I'm glad to have met all of you."

The Senshi began crying openly and rushed him in a affectionate and firm group hug. Lina smiled at him behind the crowd, her eyes shimmering. When the defenders of love and justice reluctantly broke off, she approached him silently with and uncharacteristic gentle smile on her face. She hugged him tightly and whispered in his ear. "I guess I should say thank you, Eezoon."

Ranma snorted and her playful tone. Ranma knew it long before she became a part of him. Lina was as sturdy as soul as he was. She had just as much pride. It just wasn't in her character to call him 'Eezoon-sama'. It made him somewhat more comfortable around her.

She whispered once more, "I guess I'll stay for you and for Sylphiel." She let herself float in Ranma's soul. He felt her inside him and surrounded her with warm and fuzzy feelings he did not feel all to manly about defining, embracing her spiritually.

* * *

Ranma lay waiting patiently as he awaited the restless priestess of shadow. He felt her uncertainty as she wavered on her decision. He let his awareness be felt by her.

Lina felt Eezoon in her soul, as if feeling his soft and strong eyes gazing at her intently, watching her every move unabashed. With one final bite of her lower lip her decision was made and she walked into her god's room, knowing that knocking was pointless as he knew she was coming.

She came in and sat on his bed beside him as he sat propped up against the bed post. Their eyes met brazenly and with a complete comfort rarely found between any two people. In silence they stared into each others eyes for an indefinite amount of time. Lina, for the first time in her life, looked into her lap submissively. She knew Ranma knew and she could not hide from him behind her strength.

Ranma hugged her to his chest and whispered, "I know. I'll miss you too. And don't worry, I am one too."

Ranma's hand slid her gown off of her shoulder as it caressed her arm.

* * *

Lina hugged everyone as they stood ready to travel. She came to Ranma last. She gave him a hug before looking deep in his eyes. Then to the shock of all present gave him the biggest wet one they had ever seen. It was hard for Ranma to give her his full attention with the shock and now jealousy flowing from the other girls. At least it wasn't giving way to anger like Akane, but something else he was not sure he liked so much. When he and Lina broke from their kiss and shared one last heartfelt look, he turned to find the senshi giving him a speculative look. He knew that look. He swallowed visibly.

Filia and Milgasia left to inform the Dragons at Dragon's Peak about the successful summon and rally forces to help the humans. Ranma continued training the girls in martial arts, and did not allow the girls to use his power during physical training. They became harder and more lithe as they traveled to Saillune. The girls had taken to cuddling up with him in embarrassing positions when they slept. He needed sleep himself since that was the default re-charge method.

They approached a city with wooden spikes set all around to prevent easy charging of the walls. There were trenches that allowed no straight path to the gate. There were dead trolls and bones everywhere. There were not any human remains anywhere they could see, but then again they were probably buried after battle.

Ranma's danger sense went off, and he looked up to find sorcerers holding spells ready to fire.

"Halt! Who goes there!

"We come from Sairaag to offer aid to this city, and find out information about the enemy," Ranma said.

The guard looked down on them wearily. They had realized that the only evil creatures capable of mimicking looking like a human were mid and high-level Mazoku. Besides, because of their travel on the astral plane, they could not prevent them from entering the city unseen. So pretty much, if it looked human, it was allowed in. He motioned the other guard nearby to start wheeling the gate upward. They opened it just high enough for the group to travel in and closed it behind them.

When they walked in everyone seemed jittery as they watched them walk in with beady eyes. It was like gloom set in on the city. It also seemed smelly and crowded, as there were more people than there should be. Many people did not seem to have a home and where sitting in alleyways or on the street. Ranma stopped a weary guard.

"Do you know where I could find someone named Amelia Wil Tesla Saillune?"

The guard blinked and brought his spear in a defensive position. "What would a commoner like you need with her?"

Ranma looked at him blankly. Ami spoke up, "Hey, didn't Lina say that Amelia was the princess? If that is the case she'd probably be in that castle over there." Ami finished, pointing towards the center of the city.

"Oh. Guess you're right."

Ranma and company began walking that way and the guard ran in front of them and stopped them. "What is your business with the princess!"

Ranma waved him off. Ignoring the threatening spear. "We just need to talk to her. Apparently she used to hang out with some girl named Lina. Lina sent us to come help her."

"I have never heard of this, 'Lina'!" The guard told them.

Ranma tapped his foot impatiently. "Could you send her a message for us to meet us?"

"Why would the princess want to speak with you, commoner?"

Haruka remarked, "Something tells me this war has made people paranoid."

"Gee, you think?" Ranma responded sarcastically. Ranma hovered off the ground and flew towards the castle. "Come on!"

With a chorus of 'Ray Wing!' everyone flew towards the castle at a rapid pace. Until fireballs began streaking through the air towards them. They had the place heavily defended and kept a sharp eye out. It probably also did not help that the guy on the street they had ignored starting ringing the nearest intruder bell. Causing everyone to start ringing their intruder bell, prompting the whole city to began to lock down.

Like a trained jet battalion, Ranma exploded forward faster with the rest of the girls falling back and peeling off to change trajectory, as not to make themselves an easy group target. Ranma decided to land on one of the open balconies. The girls followed shortly after dodging a some magic defensive fire. They did not fire magic at them after they were on the balcony. They probably did not want to risk hitting someone important, which probably means they were near the right place.

"What? The intruder bell!" Amelia was currently with her father looking over a map that marked all the Mazoku's known forces, and all the neighboring kingdom's last reported positions when she heard the bell.

"Report!" Crown Prince Philionel El Di Saillune demanded from the nearest commander. The commander paused to listen to the corporal that just ran in, and turned to the prince. "Intruders. 9 of them. They made it through the sorcerer guards' fire, and landed on the balcony of….," the commander swallowed, "King Eldoran."

The Crown prince blanched before shoving the commander out of the way. Amelia had the right mind to order, "Send out the elite sorcerers and warrior divisions of the castle to the vicinity, immediately. Protect the King!"

She did not even wait for the affirmative before taking off, hot on her father's heels. They ran up steps shoving the guards out of the way, paying no heed to where they fell.

They shoved the guards out of the way that were wearily approaching the intruders, too afraid to cast spells because the king might be hurt.

"Who are you to invade our castle like this? What is your intent!" Prince Phil shouted at the assembled group.

The girls looked wearily around at the defenders before looked at Ranma expectantly. He sighed. He was hoping someone else would explain since he was the master of bad first impressions.

"We are here to help in the war."

Amelia narrowed her eyes and barred her fists. "Then why didn't you enter the normal way?"

"No one would tell us where you were. They're all paranoid. Lina sent us here to find out what was going on. Talk to someone named Amelia."

Amelia's eyes widened. "I'm her. I've never met you before! I've traveled with Lina many times."

"Well," Ami began, "From what Filia said, we were summoned from our world in some sort of prophesy."

Amelia eyes shown recognition. She did remember Filia mentioning a summoning, but had not heard from her in a couple of months. "If that was the case, where is the shinzoku she was supposed to summon?"

"Shinzoku?" Ranma asked, he had never heard the term before.

"It means 'race of gods.' Just like our enemy is mazoku, 'race of demons.'"

Phil looked at them thoughtfully. "You have no idea what that means…" He mumbled. Everyone in theory knew what Shinzoku were. But then again, he had met Gourry. He forgot everything. "If that is the case, were they successful in summoning the Shinzoku?"

"I'm standing right here…." Ranma said sarcastically.

"And we're his priestesses," Usagi said, pointing at herself. "We are defenders of love and justice on our home world!" Usagi held one fist before her in a triumphant and heroic pose.

Amelia's eyes lit up. Suddenly Usagi's hands were being held in the older princess'. "You believe in Justice, too?" Everyone could hear the capital in Justice. For some reason when she said it, chills went up the senshi and Ranma's backs.

"Love and Justice always prevails!" Usagi beamed, unaware of the beast of uber-cuteness she was awakening.

"With Justice on our sides Nothing shall stand in our way!"

Usagi stared at Amelia with big, watery doe eyes. Amelia returned the look.

Haruka muttered, "Someone give me a break…." Michiru lightly elbowed her lover.

The two avid believers of justice alternated hugging and staring into each other's eyes. It was very reminiscent of the father daughter reunion Lina had witnessed before. In other words, so sweet your teeth would fall out.

"Surely we are kindred spirits!" Amelia declared.

The guards at this point started easing their way out the door.

Prince Phil nodded in understanding. "Those who believe in Justice shall always gather when evil appears and triumph over it." He stated in a voice that implied deep wisdom.

Ranma ran a hand over his face. Minako started snickering. Ami was blushing at how embarrassing their once not-so-fearless leader was acting. Rei moaned, "Oh, meatball head."

Makoto turned to Ranma. "Do you know what's going on here?"

Ranma shook his head.

"They like each other very much…" Hotaru said suspiciously oblivious.

"Anyhow…. How about you tell us what's going here on the war front. Lina has been dying to know."

"It's a months travel or more back to Sairaag. She can wait a day or two." Amelia said, still hugging Usagi.

Ranma shook his head. "I can talk to her telepathically."

Amelia blinked. She abruptly dropped Usagi on the floor. "How is Miss Lina doing?"

"She is… tired. But not too bad. She has my energy to draw from now."

"Your energy?"

Ami explained, "We became his 'priestesses using a ceremony the Dragons use to use holy power."

Amelia squealed. "Holy magic was lost here during the war of the Monster's Fall. Do you know how we could use his power without becoming his priestesses?"

Ami shook her head.

"Well, Lina learned how to do some spell from me that she uses like the dragon slave, but she draws from me. That was before she became a priestess."

"Do you know how she does it?"

Ranma shook his head. "No, but I can ask her."

"But is a thousand miles away!"

"Telepathically."

"Oh. RIght."

[Hey, Lina. How do you do that spell? Eezoon Flare?]

[Hmm. Well. I think I finally figured out the chaos words.]

[Chaos words?]

[The words that represent who you are summoning from and what you are using their power for. I can use power from something if I have a basic understanding, but it'll never work as well as it would as if I had the fuller understanding. That is what I learned when I was figuring out the Ragna Blade that summons on the creator of all.]

Ranma sent the mental equivalent of a nod.

[The odd thing about you is your power isn't really light or dark. It is just… you.]

Ranma nodded to himself, and Amelia seemed to be waiting on edge.

[When I became a god, they told me I was a god and demon.]

[Hmm. That should be powerful. My previous experience with mixed magic was exponentially stronger than the individual spells. I think you just told me the last bit I needed to know to perfect it.]

[Okay.]

Ranma tapped his foot impatiently and Amelia seemed to lean toward him in anticipation.

_[__Light __that__ casts __Shadow__._

_Blue __Eyes__ which __shine __upon__ a __dark __sea__._

_Lord__ of__ Battle __who__ thrives __on__ adversity__,_

_Grant __me __the __Power __to __defeat_

_those__ who__ challenge__ our__ might__._

_EEZOON __FLARE__!]_

Ranma felt the power drain from him. Instead of a sip, this time it was a gulp of power.

[Uh, Wow. Luckily your shot tends to only annihilate everything only within a sphere of damage, and leaves everything outside of it untouched. Ridiculously destructive, but in a controlled way. Makes sense if you are both god and demon. It feels like I'm channeling less power than a dragon slave, but it is about twice as much destructive.]

"Okay, Amelia, right?"

Amelia nodded.

"The words Lina came up were:

_Light __that__ casts __Shadow__._

_Blue __Eyes__ which __shine __upon__ a __dark __sea__._

_Lord__ of__ Battle __who__ thrives __on__ adversity__,_

_Grant __me __the __Power __to __defeat_

_those__ who__ challenge__ our__ might__._

_EEZOON __FLARE__!_"

Amelia seemed to repeat that to her self for a few moments.

"How powerful is the spell?"

"She said about twice as powerful as the dragon slave. It destroys everything with in the radius of the spell, but leaves everything outside of it untouched."

"I can't wait to try it! My first holy spell!"

Ranma looked at her strangely, but shrugged it off. "Anyway, we came here to help out and find something."

Makoto spoke up. "Find out about the other Dragon Kings. Find where they are at, or their main temple, to see if we can get them to help.

Amelia nodded. " We can search our libraries during your stay."

* * *

A few days later Ranma stood behind Prince Phil as he showed Ranma the current status of the battle they had gathered from the agents they placed in all the major cities. Apparently most of the population pulled into the walls of a few of the large cities. They were overcrowded, and food was at an all time low.

"Apparently, Sairaag has fell back to Atlas city. Every major kingdom has had it's people fall back to it's capitol. Mid-Level Mazoku have become a problem, and no one can stop them from killing. They seem to be taking their time even though they could destroy the cities in less than a day. With that many people gathered in one spot, they are just sitting ducks!"

"Lina told me when she left Sairaag that she got a little info from a brass demon. It said that their bosses where gathering shoki for more power. Something about releasing Shabranigdo."

"But, they'd have to find him first!"

"Perhaps we are looking at this wrong…." The head of the Palace Sorcerers proposed. The middle-aged man tapped his chin. "There is one piece that everyone knows where it is at."

Everyone witnessed Amelia's face darken as she realized where. "The Demon King of the North. The piece of Shabranigdo revived during the War of the Monster's Fall. The Water Dragon King only froze him and the body he inhabited there. The amount of power would be ludicrous!"

"Well, Mazoku feed off negative feelings right? The people they torture might be a source?"

Amelia shook her head. "One person is practically only a tasty treat, I imagine."

Haruka and Michiu were with Ranma in the Strategy Room. They insisted to be there since they used to be in charge of the Outer Guard during their ancient empire. The Outer Guard was not just the Senshi, but armies of magical technology and sorcerers.

Michiru spoke up, "Well, if they feed off negative feelings…. Don't they have plenty enough from all the people crammed into all the cities? Because all the farmers and ranchers packed in and went to the cities for protection, food has been scarce. I imagine everyone does not have a place to sleep or bathe. They are starving and theft is high….Perhaps the cites themselves are the energy they are using. I'm sure no one is enjoying these conditions."

Amelia frowned sadly. "We are spending all the Kingdom's coffers on running ships down the river and down the coast, outside where the barrier used to be. Ironically enough, the food makes it most of the time, although it is not enough to keep everyone fed."

Haruka rolled her eyes. "They probably are trying to keep their power source somewhat available. They wouldn't have anyone to feed off of if anyone was dead." At least most of the enemies she had faced as a Sailor Scout didn't think long-term that way. If you destroy the whole human race and steal all of the energy and souls, you'd run out of power eventually. It is like destroying your food source in a feeding frenzy. It's stupid. It just went to prove to her the amount of threat in the intelligence of these creatures called Mazoku they were fighting.

Phil's eyes widened. "They are weakened on the holy ground of the city, due to the fact it is shaped like a magical seal… but while they may not be able to act, doesn't mean they aren't gathering power! They are probably acting unseen, posing as another random face. We'd never be able to find them."

"We should gather forces and attack this enemy they are trying to revive before it happens. Who knows how close the are to accomplishing it." Haruka recommended.

"But how?" Amelia asked. "Everyone can barely defend themselves."

Phil asked, "Isn't Dragons Peak close to there? Dragons can fly, too!"

Amelia's eyes widened and she nodded. "I'm sure the dragons would help… but how would we get them a message?"

"I'll go."

Everyone turned to Ranma.

"You've figured out how to summon my power, and a few other of your sorcerers have can too."

The Prince frowned, rubbing his huge, droopy mustache. "But without you and your priestesses, we'd lose a lot of power."

Michiru calmly responded. "Just ask some of us to stay here."

Ranma fidgeted, uncertain.

Michiru, from getting to know him, quickly figured out what his worries were. "Eezoon… We are quite used to risking our lives to defend people. It is was we were born to do. We've been doing it since long before we met you. Technically, long before you were born."

Haruka cut off Ranma's protest. "This city is a capitol of magic. You've seen in the two battles we've had since we arrived, that they do pretty well by themselves. They just need a little help for the bigger things. Most of the time, only a couple of attacks from us will get rid of a mid-level demon. This is somewhat a safer place than probably everywhere else. Just leave Usagi and Hotaru. They can handle it. And although Hotaru might not look like it, she is battle hardened warrior, in her last life and this one." Haruka paused before continuing, "And I have to admit the Princess always comes through in the end. Always."

"If you say so…."

* * *

Ranma and all of the girls had their own room with cots that were normally used for solders. Amelia and Prince Phil had offered their own rooms, but Ranma did not want to put them out and flat-refused. Compared to how they were roughing it out, without tents, this was paradise. When Ranma and the Priestess's gathered to discuss plans, Ami reminded them she had yet to finish going through the library.

Ranma scratched the back of his neck embarrassingly. "I forgot about that…."

Ami continued, "And it would be best if some of us stayed behind, in case it takes you a while."

Michiru nodded. "Yeah. We already decided that Usagi and Hotaru should stay behind. Guess you can too.."

Ranma frowned.

Rei sighed at their god's over-protectiveness. "You can always teleport to where we are at if you have to."

Ranma blinked. "I can only teleport to somewhere I've been to."

Minako spoke up, "I figured if we are… like a piece of you, then you can always tell where we are, right?"

Ranma nodded.

"You can go into our minds and can feel where we are at… You should be able to figure out how to teleport to where we are."

Ranma quirked his head sideways thoughtfully. "I suppose I could. Wouldn't be as accurate as if I were there, but I should be able to get close."

Ami's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Why not?"

"Because yall don't have the same amount of senses I do."

Ami cocked her head thoughtfully, before visually acceding the point with a slow nod.

Just then there was a knock on the door.

Makoto was the closest, so she opened it.

An very old man, with tiny spectacles was in the doorway. He mumbled to himself before realizing the door was opened. He bowed deeply to Ranma. "My Lord."

Ranma waved him off. They man looked thoughtful.

"Yes, yes," He began nodding to himself, "I've found you. I thought you might have something you might want to look at. It is something I've been working on for a while, but turns out the amount of power necessary takes too long to gather, and that makes it almost useless for most use. It would take you the same amount of time to charge it as it would take to do without it."

Everyone blinked at his vagueness.

Ranma bluntly asked, "What're you talkin' about?"

"Well, it started as a thought experiment."

Everyone silently begged him to elaborate with a stare.

"Well… I knew objects can be enchanted with spells, so I attempted a flight spell on a special type of crystal that holds spells well. The small gem floated for a few days before falling. That did not seem to be so bad, so I embedded the gem in a larger object and cast it again. It only lasted an hour."

He stopped to lick his lips and dazed off, lost in thought before resuming, "I found if a magic storage talisman were embedded in the same object, the spell lasted longer than the little amount the spell-holding gem can. Problem is the amount of energy is so high. It would takes weeks of charging to go just to hold an object up for such a prolonged time. So you see, it works but the only problem is…."

Ami finished for him, "Energy. A normal sorcerer cannot power it, and would take forever to charge storage gems. So I assume you mentioned this because you think that Lord Eezoon should have much more energy than a human, and could possibly power such a thing."

The man nodded. "Well, there is another way we are experimenting with, but we have yet to figure a conversion process."

Ranma felt himself getting bored. This sounded like two teachers talking to his ears.

"What conversion process?"

"We figured if we cast large black magic spells we could convert the spell energy back to rudimentary mana."

"But the amount of destructive power! Not to mention black magic is innately destructive! You could never predict the effects!" Ami has spent a lot of time in the library. She took the time to teach the others spells she found useful. But she read up on magical theory and the like.

The man nodded, "But with the new holy magic spell from Lord Eezoon, it might work… but that is still a year or more in the making before we could attempt it."

Amelia nodded.

"I already have the frame designed. I only have to put in all the gems and prepare it for a trip."

"Huh?" Ranma eloquently asked.

Rei rolled her eyes, "What he means is he made a flying ship, but it takes a lot of power, so normally it could not be done. But since you are here, you could power it."

Them man sniffed at her simple explanation, but elaborated, "The Prince thought it would aid you to make your trip quickly."

"Makes sense," Ranma responded.

* * *

Ranma and company found themselves in a large shed the size of a barn build near one of the corners of the city. It was where the royal sorcerer's guild trained and studied. There were random items laying everywhere. Something looked like tools and others like odd contraptions. In the middle of the floor was a 50 meter wooden ship. It was sleek, and had no keel like a boat; the bottom was flat. The top looked similar to a small ship and had a deck that was mostly flat, except for an the upraised platform in front were instead of a helms wheel, there was a pedestal with different gems on it. It sat on what appeared to be foldable stilts. They were iron, and had steel wire running along, probably to fold and unfold them. The front was shaped like a water ship. Along the sides there was an 'fin' a little below the top deck that was smooth and made the whole thing look aerodynamic. Instead of sails, it had one post that rose with the Saillune crest at it's peak. It looked about two stories tall. It had a fish fin in the back that was aesthetic and similar to those seen on pirate ships.

The same man that explained it to them was giving orders to handyman and to some of the other sorcerers, marked by their off-white sleek robes that were tied shut with a belt. They ran around checking gems and casting spells.

The man eventually approached and bowed deeply. "Lord Eezoon, The preparations are almost complete. If it goes roughly the same rate as a human flying with raywing, it should take a little over two days to make it to Dragon's Peak.. We are going to give you a small crew consisting of a navigator, helmsman, cook, and a deck hand, for the landing system and to fix other things on the ship."

He motioned for them to follow him and he scuttled up the gangplank onto the main deck. On the aft end of the deck was a ladder well leading down below-decks. They went down two levels, which seemed to be the lowest deck. There were two doors at the bottom, peeking in the rear one, seemed to be a bathroom that had a small shower and a pot that could be assumed to be a sort of toilet. Beside the pot was a huge lever. It probably dropped the waste under the airship. The other, forward, door was into an apparent engineering space. There was a large vertical cylinder that had pole-arms out from it at waist level. It probably was the turning gear for raising and lowering the landing gear. Forward of that were two large balls mounted on a stand.

The old hunched scholar pointed at the top orb that was roughly a meter large. "This is the spell gem for the raywing flying spell." He pointed at orb below it that was blue and two-thirds the size of the red, "This is the spell gem for levitation, so you can 'hover' at slow speeds."

They went up one deck to the one right under the top deck. The forward door was a room lined with bunks and had privacy curtains for changing hanging from the overhead. The aft door was a small kitchen.

Their tour continued back topside onto the main deck. They noticed there was a pedestal on the front of the ship where the steering usually was, and assumed this was the same thing.

They went into the the forecastle which was half the length of the ship, and left room on either side to traverse from forward to aft. It had a door on the forward side and aft side. They went into the aft door.

As they approached the forward part of the room they realized the whole room was lined in baseball sized green gems at waist level. There were three rows of them following the wall.

"Ahem, yes. Yes…. These are the storage gems." Flat, embedded strands of golden metal ran from each of the 100 plus orbs in the bulkhead to the ceiling and onto the stand with the spell orbs. There was also two large inch think strands that appeared from the ceiling, probably from the helm.

"Now, after being filled, they will give off a pale glow. As each gem gets used up, they will go back dull, and stop glowing. Each vertical column of three is one hour of operation. As you can see there is enough to charge it for a week."

The old man shuffled over the beginning of the gems on the port side. "Now, Lord Eezoon, if you could try to charge this with magic?"

Ranma walked up and placed his hand on the orb. He sensed a aching void wanting to be filled. He seriously wondered how they designed things like this. It was not natural. He brought his power to his hand, like he would his chi, and let his firm grasp of the gathered power go. The gem sucked it up greedily. He reached out his senses to feel if it was full. He felt a slight ache and trickled a little more power.

The scholar watched attentively. When he saw that it was full her turned to the Shinzoku. "Was that too draining for you?"

Ranma shook his head. "Wasn't much power at all."

Now, if the old scholar had a care beyond books and experiments, he might be slightly fearful that someone could release an hour worth of a powerful mage's magic power in a couple of seconds and not be winded,, but the scholar was too focused on other things to ever feel fear. At best he would only feel curiosity.

"Do you think you could fill all of these now? That should be enough for a round trip."

Ranma nodded.

"Hmm. Hmmm," the old man nodded. "By your leave, Lord Eezoon."

The old man skittered off mumbling to himself.

* * *

Ranma awoke to the feeling of someone drawing his power.

_Ami__?,_ Ranma thought. He carefully got off of his cot so as to not wake the priestesses. He padded through the hallway and down the stairs. After a long trek that took him underground he found himself at the royal library. He wadded through the bookshelves and found Ami, leaning back in her chair and seeming to slightly glow with his power.

"Ami?" Ranma queried.

Ami jumped and the glow flickered out. She blushed as she saw him.

"What were you doing?" Ranma asked her. "Something wrong?"

Ami looked away from him shyly. "Just enjoying the feel of your power. Its all I'm going to probably have of you for a little while. There is no telling when I'll see you again."

Ranma did not have any clue what to say to that.

"Come here." Ami beckoned.

Ranma came to stand beside her, and she motioned him to sit. She slid over onto his lap and circled her arms around him. Ranma felt a little nervous, but not as much as before Lina.

"Because I've been in the library so much since we've gotten here, I haven't gotten the opportunity to see you as much as the others."

"Heh." Was Ranma's reply.

"I never knew why the others fussed over men so much until you."

Ranma began to sweat. Ami leaned forward and whispered into his ear, "I know about you and Lina."

Ranma blushed. "Um... that is.. .um..."

"Well, perhaps you should keep the tradition up."

Ami gave Ranma a sweet and sensual kiss on the lips.

"Don't worry," Ami whispered, "I'm the only one down here this time of night..."

Author's Notes:

Well, here is another chapter. It's a little long, and this is pretty much all new stuff. For those of you who saw the previous posting of Eezoon, before I broke it into chapters, I only had before and after Slayers arc, with a little of the Slayers Arc. Well, since I already know where I want to go, I've got to accomplish and create all the events that make things turn out the way they did once they return. In a way, it makes it a whole lot easier to write this story because I already set up myself a detailed end point for the Slayers arc.

I've actually been sitting on this chapter for a while.


End file.
